Work, Impact, Results

“Take work away from our competitors”

“Wins some projects that showcase our expertise”

“Build relationships across the client account”

“Grow our revenue”

“Improve our reputation in the industry”

“Flawless execution of our scope of work”

“Be seen as a trusted partner”

“Help our client create an elevated customer experience”

“Build our own team’s capabilities”

“Help our client forge a strong bond with their customers”

Looking at the research, some of these ways of thinking about success predict for inconsistent or even below-average performance, while others predict for consistently out-performing targets.  Focusing on the impact we want to have on other people not only leads to much higher levels of satisfaction and wellbeing, but is also far more likely to lead to the quantitative results on which people are measured.  So here is a frame to help make sense of, and connect these different thoughts. They are all important – the question is where to focus and how they relate to one another:

I’ll illustrate how this works by describing a coaching conversation. An account executive, let’s call her Charly, defines success in terms of “growing revenue” for her account. If we use this frame, growing revenue is a Result.

So the question is, what is the Impact that would lead to growing revenue? Charly says “being seen as a trusted advisor” would lead to growing revenue. The next question is what Impact on the client would lead to being seen that way? Because “being seen” in a certain way is about reputation, which is the result of some underlying Impact. She says “demonstrating that we care about helping our client be successful”, which is certainly part of becoming trusted. Expanding on how to help her client be successful, she says “we need to help our client forge a stronger bond with their customers.” She’s started to define the needed Impact in more specific terms.

Now we need to explore the Work required to create that Impact. What would we need to do in order to demonstrate we care about our client’s success, and to be able to help them forge a stronger bond with their customers? She says “we need to deeply understand our client’s strategy and how their customers perceive them today; and we also need to apply our understanding of their industry, and emerging technology trends, to help them innovate on new ways to understand and relate to their customers.” Having defined the work, now she can think about the people, skills and activities required to do it, and why it’s important. If her team understands the connection between their work and the impact, they will be more closely aligned not only among themselves, but also with their client.

Finally, to come back to results, I ask what the results would be for her client if her firm is able to help them forge a stronger customer bond. Note that so far she has only talked about results for her own company. The more we can extend the impact beyond her own organization, to her client, their customers and other stakeholders, the greater the excitement everyone will feel about the impact. She tells me that her client’s revenue growth would mean they will be able to reinvest more of their revenue in innovative technology and help their customers in more meaningful ways. And now she’s started to feel more excited about her firm’s potential for having a real impact here.

Let’s summarize how the Work -> Impact -> Results frame applies to this short, illustrative coaching conversation:

Work

• Deeply understand our client’s strategy and how their customers perceive them today
• Apply our understanding of their industry, and emerging technology trends, to help them innovate on new ways to understand and relate to their customers

Impact

• Help our client forge a stronger bond with their customers
• Be seen by our client as a trusted advisor

Results

• Client grows revenue (allowing them to reinvest in creating greater customer impact)
• Charly’s team grows account revenue

All three elements — Work, Impact and Results — are critical. The financial results are evidence that Charly and her client had the impact they needed to have. And the results create a positive feedback loop back to the work and the impact. Without those results, Charly will be unable to continue help her client because her firm will choose to do work elsewhere. And her client needs to see revenue results in order to be able to reinvest and continue to help their customers.

The paradox here is that in order to have the best chance of getting the financial results, we don’t focus directly on them. Instead, we focus on the impact on other people that will lead to those results, and the work required to create that impact.  There is a great example of how focusing primarily on the metrics led to truly undesirable results for Wells Fargo in this HBR Article.  Because of strong management incentives but inadequate leadership, the metrics displaced the real goal of helping customers and Wells employees narrowed their focus to the point of committing fraud.

The key is that focusing on Impact is the most likely way to get the Results.  And specificity matters.