Managers that focus on effectiveness are powerful people. They do not merely get things done. They get the right things done.

The word effective is probably the most-used buzz word throughout the management kingdom. The greatest starter books ever written have effective in their titles. Effectiveness is the holy grail of work. Whether you are a manager of a huge division of a multinational corporation or a greeter at a big box store, if you can understand and focus on effectiveness, then learn what areas to become effective in, you will fall upstairs so fast you will get dizzy on the way.

What does effective mean, and what is effectiveness?

ef·fec·tive \i-ˈfek-tiv, e-, ē-, ə-\ adj. producing a decided, decisive, or desired effect

You are being effective if you are getting the results that you want from whatever you are doing. Some examples:

• If you open a store to make money, and you make lots of money
• If you go to work to pay for your house, and you successfully pay for the house you want
• You want to get promoted, and you receive a promotion

… you just might be effective.*

Being effective is about two primary components: goals and results. You are effective if you get results that meet your goals.

Or, maybe it is slightly more complicated than that. Are you effective if you meet your short-term goals, but long-term the results you will reap will be undesirable? Some examples:

• You open a store to make money, and you run a lot of very tasteless ads that are offensive to a large segment of the population. Your store makes a lot of money - this year. The next year, you are the target of a class action lawsuit and lose everything defending yourself.
• You go to work to pay for your house, and you do successfully pay for your house, but by purchasing such a large house, you live unhappily and house-poor for years before you finally sell the money pit.
• You want to get promoted, and through a strategy including undermining and misinforming your peers, you are able to use smoke and mirrors to create the illusion of success and receive a promotion from your boss. The following months see your previous peers doing horrible work for you, management wakes up, and you are asked to leave.

Being effective is all about goals and results. Thus, effectiveness comes down to this:

1. Set a goal
2. Make a plan to reach the goal
3. Execute the plan and measure along the way
4. Succeed

Setting goals short term or in a foolishly shallow fashion, as we saw above, can lead to long-term ineffectiveness despite some short term, quick gains initially. Thus, goal setting is a major skill that every businessman ought to have in his arsenal.

You would think that goal setting is easy, and you would be right. If it is, then why are so many people setting so many very bad goals out there? Why do so many people work all year without any goals at all only to have their boss reveal to them what their goals are to fill in the forms on the last month of the year? Why do so few people out there in the world, no matter how senior they are in their field, have no measurements or statistics or list of accomplishments at the end of each quarter or annually?

To succeed, you need to make sure you are on target, and that means measuring. To execute a plan, you need a plan to begin with. To plan, you need a goal. To set a good goal, you have to know what a goal looks like, and you have to understand why you or your people receive their paychecks.

The ultimate knowledge that you need to be effective is the answer to the question, “Why do these people pay me to come here every day?” If you can get the real answer to that question, rather than your imagined correct answer (which is often not what your boss is thinking), you will know what sort of goals to set.

Effectiveness is getting results that meet your goals.

* Apologies to Jeff Foxworthy.