Managing Effort or Outcomes. Improve Your Management Approach
Managing effort or managing outcomes – which is best? Choose the right option for the right situation and right person and you get:
- Better performance or better outcomes
- Much happier more engaged team members
- You get to create great development opportunities regardless of their expertise
- Save yourself a lot of time and effort
Managing Effort or Outcomes. Improve your Management Approach
- What exactly do we mean by managing effort, activity and tasks?
- How managing outcomes or results is different and why it can be better
- 7 approaches to choose the best option – managing effort or managing outcomes
If you get it wrong, you are likely to have:
- Lower performance in your team
- Demotivated unhappy team members
- Much more limited growth opportunities for team members
- Much less time personally, as you have a lot more problems to resolve directly
Choosing how much to do of each – managing effort or outcomes – can be pretty tricky. The best option depends on the situation, the people involved and what you are trying to achieve. There are a couple of simple approaches or rule of thumbs which will make getting the right balance a lot easier for you and I will share these in a bit.
At the end, I will share with you vital tips for how you need to change this balance as you progress up the management ranks. I know so many middle and senior managers who get this wrong and it sets them back months, if not years. Don’t let this happen to you so do stay for this.
Watch on YouTube
Listen on Podcast
what exactly do we mean by managing effort, activity and tasks?
Managing effort is when you help a person step by step through an activity to get a desired result. You are managing each step or task of the activity i.e. monitoring completion of each step
A classic example in sales – you track the number of phone calls made, the number of meetings completed, the number of proposals sent out.
When managing activity, you stay close to the work being done, almost working alongside team members. You are involved in what they were doing. Micro-managing is one extreme of managing effort or managing activities.
When you first start managing others, you will be managing effort or managing activity. This is absolutely normal. New managers or junior managers contribute directly and work alongside their team members to hit team goals. Your expertise in doing the tasks and activities within the team is likely to be better than your team members.
Managing effort or activity is a necessary management style and very useful in specific situations.
Let’s compare managing effort or outcomes next, so you understand exactly what the difference is, and then we will go on discuss how to use each in the best way to increase team performance and results.
HOW managing outcomes or results is different and why it can be better
When you are managing outcomes or managing results, you are not overly concerned or involved in how those results are achieved. You don’t measure or check completeness of the activity that should lead to the results you want.
Instead you focus on measuring or checking the outcomes or results produced by team members.
A lot of activity might go into producing a single result. Measuring results means the manager is more removed from the activity and only understands performance much LATER in the activity cycle. This is a more hands off or higher level management style.
Going back to our sales example. When you are measuring outcomes, you might only measure the number of sales won and the total revenue generated by those sales.
The key points – what you track, measure and manage is later in work cycle and you are typically much further way from the work. When the results are good, you assume all the activity producing those results are good. This makes managing the work easier and less time consuming for the manager assuming all is going well. Those doing the work also have a lot more responsibility and autonomy when the manager is focused on managing results. This is why results matter more than activity in many situations.
Managing results can be extremely useful in many circumstances, and very painful in others. Let’s cover when to focus on activity or results.
7 approaches to choose the best option – managing effort or managing outcomes
There are 7 factors that I suggest you consider before you decide to focus on managing effort or outcomes or choosing what balance you are going to strike between the two. These are:
- Expertise or capability of the worker or team
- The level of repetition within the team
- The importance or impact of the result
- The risk level of getting the desired result
- The clarity of the goal and ease of measuring activity or results
- The amount of time you have
- The level of development desired for the other person
Taking each one in turn and discussing when you focus of managing activity or results:
1 — Expertise or capability of the worker or team
The more capable or the greater the expertise of the person doing the work, the more you should manage results. Managing results is very useful when they know more than you in terms of how to achieve the desired results. Use this approach for high performers.
The lower the expertise or capability, the more you should manage effort to reach the results needed. Use this approach for inexperienced, junior or new staff.
2 — The level of repetition within the team
If the team or team member does the tasks and activities every day and consistently produces great results, then focus on managing results. If they do the activities irregularly, or produce very inconsistent results, focus on managing effort and activities more than results.
This factor is closely related to expertise but is not the same.
3 — The importance or impact of the result
The greater the importance of the desired result or the greater the impact on your team or the business, the more you should manage effort or manage activity as well as the result. This approach is to keep you close to the work and give you indicators of likely results as early as possible. This gives you more time for course corrections or overcoming problems.
4 — The risk level of getting the desired result
The higher the risk levels of getting the desired result, the more you should manage effort. Again you stay closer to the work and find out problems much earlier.
When risk levels are low, managing results is usually a lot easier and more sensible.
5 — The clarity of the goal and ease of measuring activity or results
The more clearly you can define the results you need and the clearer the steps are to achieve that result, the more you can manage results. When the goal is vague, ambiguous or hard to measure, or hard to control, the more you should focus on activity.
Your ability to, and the ease of, measuring activity or measuring results is also key. For example, if you can’t measure activity how can you be good at managing effort or managing activity?
6 — The amount of time you have
The time you have is precious. To get great team results, you need to use your time where it is most effective. Prioritise your time and focus on managing effort where the risk is high, where the least expertise is and where the highest impact is. When you are confident others can get the results needed, where expertise is high etc, managing results is usually the most sensible option.
7 — The level of development desired for the other person
Finally, how much development you want to provide to the person doing the work is an important factor. The more you are managing results, the more opportunity the person doing the work has to take responsibility, to think, to problem solve and to work autonomously. This creates greater development potential.
Always flex how much you manage effort or outcomes based on where the other person’s expertise level is. The further they are outside of their comfort zone, the closer you should stay to the work and more support you should provide to ensure success.
Always consider all of these seven factors when managing activity or results. You need to judge how to prioritise each factor in terms of importance against each situation you face. There is rarely right or wrong. Usually choices are better or worse in terms of getting the desired results in the timeframes needed. The more you consciously consider all these factors, the quicker you will build your expertise.
In summary
Both managing effort and managing outcomes are very valuable management styles. The best manager correctly flex their approach to the situation they face, who is doing the work and the other factors we have been through.
There is rarely right or wrong. The best managers gain the expertise to CONSISTENTLY choose the best options. Choosing the best option in each situation will give you better results than an average manager. Keep experimenting and developing your own expertise.
As you progress through the management ranks, it becomes more important for you to let go of the detail and allow others to take responsibility for the detail. As you become more senior, you should spend more of your time managing results and less managing activity.
When the results are worse than you expect, that is the time to dive into managing the activity. This makes best use of your time and allows you to manage a lot more people, projects and work while STILL GETTING GREAT RESULTS.
One of the common reasons managers struggle as the move up a level is they have not adjusted the balance between managing activity or managing results. Keep experimenting with different balances until you get the best results. Always consciously consider this balance every day at work.
The 7 Key Factors
As a reminder, the seven key factors that change your approach to managing effort or outcomes are:
- Expertise or capability of the worker or team
- The level of repetition within the team
- The importance or impact of the result
- The risk level of getting the desired result
- The clarity of the goal and ease of measuring activity or results
- The amount of time you have
- The level of development desired for the other person
If you have any questions on “Managing Effort or Outcomes. How The Best Managers Get It Right”, please email me at support@enhance.training and I will get back to you.
Don’t forget to take a look at all the different course options to build your management expertise, stand out from peers and bring your next promotion closer. Click here to take a look at your options
Build Management Expertise Quickly
Access all our prize winning management expertise to stand out from your peers, increase your confidence and credibility and take years off your future promotions.
We share a ton of content, e-books, help sheets and more to save you a ton of time and move your next pay rise much closer. Click the link to find out more about the Management Skills Hub
Navigation
