So now you’ve set aside time for creating successes, what exactly are you going to do with it? You’ve got to decide what sort of successes you want to generate. And the most valuable ones are the ones that help you to achieve your core objective. And what is your core objective? You should know this – you should have been told when you started the job. But if not, you can work it out for yourself.
Establish Your Objective
Ask yourself: what am I here for? Why – in broad terms – does the organization employ me? Here are some possible answers, which depend on the department you work for:
• Sales: increase profits.
• Accounts: ensure accurate, helpful billing and/or payment systems.
• Production: improve productivity.
• PR: increase positive public awareness.
• Distribution: ensure fast, high-quality distribution at minimum cost.
• Marketing: attract new customers.
These are only examples – you may know that your objective is different. For example, you might work in marketing but know that your core objective is to build customer loyalty.
So decide what your objective is and then aim to create successes that further this objective. Your personal targets should have been set – by your boss in consultation with you – to help you achieve this objective. So anything you do that helps you to exceed your targets will be ideal in creating achievements that will earn you big brownie points.
Threats and Opportunities
You’ve established your objective now, but how can you use this information to notch up significant achievements? It’s a good idea to start by identifying the biggest threats and opportunities your department faces. (This is the sort of clear, productive thinking you can do during those times you set aside in your diary.) Draw up a list of key threats and another of key opportunities. Let’s suppose you work in the distribution department. Your lists might look like this:
Threats:
• Rising cost of packaging materials.
• Unreliability of ageing vehicle fleet.
• Poor flexibility makes it hard to customize service.
Opportunities:
• New despatch methods can mean faster delivery.
• Upgrade of delivery fleet could give opportunity to change system.
• Expansion of department into new and larger building.
The most significant threats and opportunities are the ones that impinge directly on your overall objective. If your objective is to attract new customers, the threat of increased competition (which could reduce your level of new customers) is more important than the threat of losing a key staff member – important though that is.
You need list only the two or three biggest threats and opportunities. Once you’ve successfully dealt with them you can return to this process and identify the next batch in a few weeks or months. What you are doing now is locating the most valuable areas to create successes at the moment.
When it comes to developing these successes you can choose which you tackle, and deal with as many as you comfortably can at one time. A big project might take up all your available time, while two or three smaller ones could run concurrently. If you tackle threats, you’ll be looking for creative and effective ways to cope with problems so that the department can still meet its objective. Any opportunities you decide to tackle will demand creative ideas so the department can capitalize on the potential. Either way, and depending on the threat or opportunity in question, you will certainly need to find solutions and you may also have to carry them through yourself.
Success Begins at Home. Successes that you can both plan and carry out yourself will earn you most brownie points, so pick ones that are within your own direct responsibility if you can. However, if you have no significant challenges facing you personally at work, but think you could solve a problem or generate achievements for the wider department, by all means go ahead and work on these.
Generate Ideas. Look at your lists and decide which threat or opportunity you’re going to tackle first. Now you need to use some of that crucial time you’ve set aside in your diary to find ideas for turning the theory into practical success. There are various ways you can spend your time to achieve this:
• Talk to colleagues.
• Talk to your boss and to other managers.
• Read newspaper and trade press articles.
• Do relevant research on the internet. Get prices from suppliers.
Use creativity techniques – alone or with colleagues – to generate ideas.
Which approach you use will depend on the nature of the challenge. Most probably you will need to combine several of them to create a rounded solution that is both feasible and has a high chance of success.
Use the Ideas! You may or may not be in a position to carry out your newly devised plan. If you are the manager, or have responsibility for the problem or challenge you are working on, you can go ahead (with any approvals you need) and get on with it. But maybe you are the bought ledger supervisor and can see a way to revolutionize the customer accounts system for the better. Or perhaps you’re a sales manager and have found a solution for reducing complaints that hangs on a change in production.
If this is the case, don’t simply talk to the relevant manager or your own boss – except as part of the process of generating a solution. It is far better to write down your ideas and submit them as a proposal. This may be as short as a single page, or it may be three or four pages. But put your name on it and present it smartly and clearly. There are two key reasons for doing it this way:
People are less likely to forget that it was your idea that created the success. If they do, you can prove it (when you negotiate your pay rise) because your name is on the original proposal.