Drucker

Peter Drucker was right. The only way to judge your own performance is to go back to the original goals you set for an initiative or project (after work has been done) and grade yourself on reaching those goals. I recently conducted this analysis on my performance in a recent project and came up with this 4 step tracking tool to focus my work and accelerate delivery.

My plan is to check my performance each day 4 times a day on the four below criteria.

1. Delivery Focus - "Stop paying attention to smiles. Do you have a goal, do you have a list?"

2. Execute sub-segments - "Which sub-segment of the project are you executing on?"

3. Hit your daily goals - "Are you on track to hit your daily goals? If no, start shedding."

4. Work with experts - "Are you working with experts to improve the quality of your work?"

I am in the production business. Producing high quality information under a specific time frame is my game.

One of the interesting things I discovered during the process is that my likeability frequently prevents me from receiving real feedback. My people skills can actually be a weakness. At times I have even found people even intimidated/overly impressed with my people skills. Upon reflection I think this is one of the great pitfalls of many people's personal development. Many occasions, environments, companies reward people that are nice and well liked. My view is that its actually a crime to teach people that just being nice gets the job done. It doesn't. Producing and having impact gets the job done. Consequently I coined the phrase "Stop paying attention to smiles" and created the column for delivery focus. Its something I look forward to working on.

(Ever heard the phrase: "You want to get something done ask a busy person". Why? Its because those people are producers and live their life to have impact)