December 16, 2014: How Can You Recognize Success?

Do you know success when you see it in others?  Do you know it when you see it in yourself?  Do you know when others see it in you?

These are all questions we have to answer.  If we have to answer "no" to any of them, we owe it to ourselves and our coworkers to find out how.

In many organizations, the obvious measure of success is a person's review score.  4/5 might be a great review, 153 out of 200 might be a great review.  Whatever your organization's system is, you should have a good idea of what constitutes a successful review score.

But take a moment: what things are going in in your office that are essential to perceived success but are not on your review?  In one organization, the new management team led an effort to improve the company's performance to a level that previous management teams had said was impossible.  They use that word: impossible.  But the new team did it in about a year.

The company was more profitable than ever before, customers were happier than ever before, and the company suddenly had the opportunity to take market share from its rivals.  Everything looks good, right?  This is what success looks like.  By every single measure on every person's company goals, the company was rocking.  The executive team flew out from headquarters to congratulate the team for such an achievement, they distributed awards, they met with the customer to shake hands and tell each other how great each other was.

6 weeks later, this same team, the one that had achieved the impossible, was under threat for their jobs for something that was not on their performance reviews.  No one would have guess it just a few months prior.  The team was shocked.  After all this work and success and recognition, how is it that perception could change so dramatically?  The team's performance had not changed since all the good things had happened.

For reading today's blog, you have earned a homework assignment: take 5 minutes and write down all the the negative things that could happen in your workplace.  Everything that might reflect your work in some way, no matter how remote.  Is there a report that someone could interpret to mean something that isn't correct?  Is there an individual that upper management has their eye on that maybe you should have taken corrective action with?  Is there a gap in your team's training that you haven't addressed?  What would a highly critical visitor from the home office think of your operation, and would such a visitor be able to tell the home office executive who sent her that all is well?

We'll spend the next few posts exploring these hypotheticals and what your options are surrounding them.