Perhaps the most important key to high productivity is for you to focus and concentrate on the most valuable and important things you can do, all day long.
Developing absolute clarity about your key result areas is essential for executive effectiveness and high productivity. Your key result areas are those things that you have been hired to do, accomplish, or achieve. They are your top priorities in terms of the value that you contribute to your business. These are the tasks that, once accomplished, determine whether or not you fulfill your responsibilities to your company and to yourself.
What are the key results that you have been hired to accomplish? Try asking the question another way: “Why are you on the payroll?” This is a key organizing question that you should be asking yourself every minute of every day—especially when you are overwhelmed by too much to do and too little time.
A key result area (KRA) can be defined as having three specific qualities:
1. It is something that you absolutely, positively must do to fulfill the responsibilities and demands of your job.
2. It is something for which you are 100 percent responsible. If you do not do it yourself, there is no one else who can or will do it for you.
3. It is something that is completely under your control. You do not need the assistance or participation of someone else in order to complete this part of your work.
If you are not sure exactly what your key result areas might be, go to your boss and ask. Ask your boss, “Why, exactly, am I on the payroll?”
Surprisingly enough, most bosses won’t know how to answer this question, either. They have never thought through why you are on the payroll, or even why they themselves are on the payroll. When you ask this question and force your boss to think it through, you will both become more productive and effective in your work.
A second question with regard to key result areas is: “What can only I do that, if done really well, will make a real difference to my organization?”
As it happens, there is a specific answer to this question for virtually every hour of every day.
In your work, there are things that only you can do. If you don’t do them, no one else will do them for you. If you do them well, it will make an extraordinary difference to your job and to your company. These are the specific activities that contribute the greatest value to your work. For you to perform at the highest level, you must be absolutely clear about what those activities are that are more valuable than any others, and which only you can perform to distinction.
Remember, there are always a hundred little things that you can do that, if done well, will make very little difference to your success or to your contributions.
Focusing on key result areas is the most direct way to unleash effectiveness, power, persuasion, enthusiasm, and energy. You always get a tremendous feeling of self-confidence and personal power from completing something that is significant and important both to you and your company.
On the other hand, in the age of distraction, you actually experience feelings of low self-esteem, frustration, stress, and often depression when you are doing something that, in your heart of hearts, you know makes very little difference to achieving your major goals.
There are seldom more than five to seven key result areas in any job. Each KRA is a specific task that you must do if you are to complete the overall output responsibilities of your work.
For example, if you are a salesperson, your key result areas are:
1. Prospecting (i.e., finding new customers to talk to)
2. Building trust and rapport with prospects so that they are open to listening to you
3. Identifying needs accurately
4. Presenting your product persuasively
5. Answering objections clearly
6. Closing the sale decisively
7. Getting resales and referrals from satisfied customers
Each of these tasks must be done in order for you to fulfill your responsibilities as a salesperson for your company.
As a manager, you have seven key result areas as well. They are:
1. Planning (deciding exactly what is to be done)
2. Organizing (bringing together the people, money, and resources needed to fulfill the plan)
3. Recruiting (finding the right people to work with you to achieve the goals)
4. Delegating (making sure that people know exactly what they are supposed to do, and at what time, and to what level of quality)
5. Supervising (making sure that each job is done on schedule to the required level of quality)
6. Measuring (setting standards and benchmarks, plus time lines, for the accomplishment of important tasks)
7. Reporting (making sure that each person above you, next to you, and below you knows exactly what it is that you are doing and achieving)
More than 90 percent of all of your problems in management, or in life, are from “dropping the ball” in one of these key result areas. It is like leaving out an important ingredient in a kitchen recipe. For some reason, the dish simply does not taste as good as it could.
Everyone at every level of the organization should know what his or her key results are. Be sure that all employees who report to you are clear about the most valuable contribution that they can make to the organization. One of the greatest kindnesses that you can give to your employees is to help them to be crystal-clear about the most valuable and important things that they can do, and then to help them achieve those goals on time.
No matter where you are in your organization chart, you need to know two things: First, what are your boss’s key result areas? What is it that your boss has to accomplish that is more important to the success of the organization than anything else? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you cannot help your boss get his or her job done, which is very important to your own personal success.
Second, you need to know what your own key result areas are. Furthermore, each person who reports to you must know the answer to this question about you as well. Each of your subordinates must also know what their key result areas are, in order of importance, and when they need to be accomplished.