Posts Tagged ‘organisational success’

Being in a leadership role in an organisation, whether small or large, is demanding. Faced with these demands it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and what is key to achieving long term organisational success.

So what in my experience are the keys to achieving long term organisational success?

Key 1: Clarity Of Direction

You need to be clear about where you are heading. While you will need to be flexible from time to time, it is important to keep focus on the end game.

Key 2: Products Or Services Someone Wants To Buy

Ultimately, unless you have sufficient demand for what you offer, you can never achieve long-term success.

Key 3: The Ability To Market What You Have To Offer

There is little use in having a product or service that is world-class but the best kept secret.

Key 4: The Ability To Convert Interested Parties Into Buyers

A lot of interest in what you have to offer is great but the real acid test is whether you can convert the interested into buyers.

Key 5: Good Back Office Processes

Some businesses do a great job at making the sale but struggle with delivering the product or service because they don’t pay enough attention to the back office stuff.

Key 6: A Range Of Products And Services

Successful organisations know that products and services have a period when they are at their peak so spread the risk by having products and services at different stages in the life cycle.

Key 7: Employees Who Are Engaged

A lack of engagement hurts organisations in terms of productivity, sales, customer satisfaction and profits.

Key 8: People Who Can Do The Job Well

Successful organisations have people who are appropriately skilled and developed to do the job to the highest standard.

Key 9: A Willingness To Innovate

People have a thirst for new things or things that improve what is already on offer and good organisations respond to this demand through innovating.

Key 10: A Willingness To Take Balanced Risks

No organisation can get beyond a certain point without taking some sort of risk.

The Bottom Line:

In a fast moving world where there is a demand for instant results it is easy to lose sight of the key things that contribute to organisational success. I wonder what else you would add to the list?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps professional people become great leaders and managers. Sign up for his free audio e-course Leadership Success at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk.

Much is written about the benefits of setting goals and how they can transform individual and organisational performance.  While it is true that goals can make a real difference, they need to be meaningful.  What do I mean when I say that they need to be meaningful?

They need to focus on something that matters

Too often, organisations set goals that they think should rather than setting goals that they really care about.  When this happens, it might be due to the organisation losing sight of its core purpose or reason for being in business.

They need to be realistic

There are many differing points of view on what is realistic and what is not realistic.  Part of this realism test is about taking stock of where you are right now and whether the timescale that you have set for achieving the goal is believable to you and your team.

They need to measurable

If you are to set a meaningful goal you need to be able to measure whether you are on track or off track when it comes to delivering the anticipated results.  If you find that you are struggling to determine a way of measuring, it might be that you need to revisit your goal to make more specific and reduce vagueness.

Bottom Line – Goals that are meaningful can help you and your team achieve organisational success. So what do you need to do to make your goals more meaningful?