Getting Results
Showing our clients how to achieve satisfying results, year after year, is the centerpiece of Lamy Consulting.
Background
The key to getting results is this: have a clear, simple, broad-spanning GOAL. A stretch, but not too much. Line-of-sight, so everyone can see how it works. The business journalist Jim Collins dubbed it a BHAG, or Big Hairy Audacious Goal.
History’s great leaders have understood the power of goals intuitively. But our current understanding, backed up by academic research, was launched in 1968 with a paper by Professor Edwin Locke of the University of Maryland. Locke’s simple take-away: groups perform better, actually much better, when they have a goal.
And…there’s more. Not just any goal…you’ve got to think carefully about what you’re shooting for. And you need a well-oiled machine, a process, to get you there. And finally, you need an accountability checker, a steady, ongoing vehicle to keep you on track.We wrap this all together in our proprietary Get Results process.
The Get Results Process
We work with your leadership team to:
- Develop a compelling goal. We draw from four main sources
- Your Values. Haven’t written them down? We’ll start with that.
- Your Strategic Plan. Don’t have one? Or maybe it’s gotten a bit geriatric? Let’s brighten it up, bring it up to date.
- Your Current Issues list. We’ll talk it through with your team, identify the biggies, and then focus.
- Your front line people. Manage By Walking Around…talk to the folks on the floor, who touch customers and product every day. They may not be strategists, but they’ll have insights and sources that you won’t have access to.
- Break your BHAG down into bite-sized chunks, and assign owners and teams. Magical alchemy happens here; people take enthusiastic ownership, teamwork erupts, and commitment breaks out.
- Set up periodic meetings to keep the effort on track. We like weekly, but sometimes more or less than that works just fine.
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White Paper
We offer a 17 page white paper on achieving results. It’s comprehensive, and it gives you enough guidance to implement the Get Results process on your own. It’s free; we only ask that, if you do download it, please send us an email telling us about your experience and any questions you may have. Thank you!