How Important Is The Why?

How Important Is The Why?

July 8, 2015

by: Paul Bertrand

 

 

Many of us look at things in different ways.  I tend to look at the big picture of things.  Many of us, have that thoroughness of reviewing things by discovering and getting to know the why, what, where, when and who of things.  Are we safe to say that everyone can come to their own conclusion and understanding of the why?  No.  Purpose is too important, and without clarity and it being well understood by all members of a team, assumptions, being misguided and unfocused creates lack of productivity and profits. 

Having an uninformed environment happens within many organizations today. What is happening in many of the workplaces is our leaders are not focusing on the most important piece of the picture, the WHY.  Not only are they not figuring out the purpose themselves, they’re not sharing and communicating with their teams. 
A recent survey done by Deloitte tells us that there is some correlation between success and purpose, but most alarming, is that the respondents who said their culture of purpose was lacking, had an employee satisfaction of 19%.

In the book “Monday Morning Leadership” by David Cottrell, Tony mentors Jeff by saying: "Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing." This basically means that you have to prioritize what's most important in getting the teams' job done. Communicating your priorities to your team clearly is essential to getting the job done right.
The purpose, “main thing”, is the number one goal and focus on your team. The main thing might be to increase sales, satisfy customers or retain quality employees. You may have one, two or even three main things, but the important thing is to stay focused on what is most important.

Some managers operate in constant crisis mode and rarely focus on the important tasks. They’re too busy trying to fix every problem that pops up. This usually leads to taking care of all the low priority tasks and not spending time on the main thing.
Research done by Effective Managers™ and the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa identified that managers spend 20% of their time doing things they were not hired to do.  Worse, was another 26% of their time was spent doing support work that should have been delegated to a subordinate or other department.   Think of it – that’s over two days a week… it’s like starting the work week on Wednesday after morning coffee break.

If you are reading this article and thinking what can be done to measure or improve your culture of purpose, contact Canadian People Management Inc. to learn more about a new tool to help highlight strengths and weaknesses of your leaders.  Effective Managers™ found dimensions of accountability being critical to success and also found that a series of other measures have significant correlation to organizational effectiveness, hence increased productivity.

 Paul Bertrand is founder of Canadian People Management Inc. which is based out of Pickering, Ontario. His company specializes in organizational effectiveness development through solutions tailored to strengthen his client’s cultures, leadership and teams.

www.cpeoplemi.com