Recognise This! – Focusing only on the “what” (results) can lead to unintended consequences.

Kevin Kruse (author of Employee Engagement 2.0) recently presented in Forbes the idea of Feedforward. Instead of constantly looking back once a year at what an employee did (or didn’t do), new performance systems should be looking forward with continuous coaching and refined goal setting.

Indeed, we should be much more focussed on “how” employees get the work done and less on “what” they do, especially with how we recognise and reward employees. This is a core component of strategic, social recognition – focusing on how well employees “live” your values in their daily work. And aren’t your core values the most accurate definition of the “how” you want work to be accomplished?

Laurie Ruettimann, author of the “Cynical Girl” blog and frequent speaker on all things HR, recently told this story in her blog:

My colleague, Lizzie, is out on her honeymoon. She left our team a list of things to do whilst she is out.

Then she called and said, “I suck, Laurie. My job can be distilled down to seventeen things.”

And I said, “Yeah, and the intern can do most of them.”

Dang. I’m a stone cold boss.

But then I told her — that’s the modern economy. It’s not what you do, necessarily, but how you do it. We didn’t hire Lizzie because she is a robot. And I don’t care if there are 17 things or 200 things for her to do each day.

We hired her to do whatever needs to be done — and to do it well.

We all have the list of what we do. The more important question is: Do we know as well how all those things should be done?

What are the important “hows” in your job? How do you know?