3: What Can I Contribute?
THE EXECUTIVE’S COMMITMENT
The focus on contribution turns the executive’s attention away from his own specialty, his own narrow skills, his own department, and toward the performance of the whole. It turns his attention to the outside, the only place where there are results.
Executives who do not ask themselves, “What can I contribute?” are not only likely to aim too low, they are likely to aim at the wrong things. Above all, they may define their contribution too narrowly.
For every organization needs performance in three major areas: It needs direct results; building of values and their reaffirmation; and building and developing people for tomorrow.
Direct results always come first.
An organization that is not capable of perpetuating itself has failed. An organization therefore has to provide today the men who can run it tomorrow. It has to renew its human capital. It should steadily upgrade its human resources. The next generation should take for granted what the hard work and dedication of this generation has accomplished. They should then, standing on the shoulders of their predecessors, establish a new “high” as the baseline for the generation after them.
Commitment to contribution is commitment to responsible effectiveness.
THE RIGHT HUMAN RELATIONS
Warm feelings and pleasant words are meaningless, are indeed a false front for wretched attitudes, if there is no achievement in what is, after all, a work-focused and task-focused relationship.
The focus on contribution by itself supplies the four basic requirements of effective human relations:
• communications;
• teamwork;
• self-development; and
• development of others.
But communications are practically impossible if they are based on the downward relationship.
The harder the superior tries to say something to his subordinate, the more likely is it that the subordinate will mishear. He will hear what he expects to hear rather than what is being said.
But executives who take responsibility for contribution in their own work will as a rule demand that their subordinates take responsibility too. They will tend to ask their men: “What are the contributions for which this organization and I, your superior, should hold you accountable? What should we expect of ou? What is the best utilization of your knowledge and your ability?” And then communication becomes possible, becomes indeed easy.
Once the subordinate has thought through what contribution should be expected of him, the superior has, of course, both the right and the responsibility to judge the validity of the proposed contribution.
According to all our experience, the objectives set by subordinates for themselves are almost never what the superior thought they should be. The subordinates or juniors, in other words, do see reality quite differently. And the more capable they are, the more willing to take responsibility, the more will their perception of reality and of its objective opportunities and needs differ from the view of their superior or of the organization. But any discrepancy between their conclusions and what their superior expected will standy out strongly.
THE EFFECTIVE MEETING
The effective man always states at the outset of a meeting the specific purpose and contribution it is to achieve.
To focus on contribution is to focus on effectiveness.
-- From "The Effective Executive"
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