From process to result and back

​​​​​​​Business people and especially process managers do not like. Who are they? They call processers people who are led by internal and external circumstances, live without setting goals for themselves or forgetting about their goals. They are more interested in the process than the result. The processor lives by what he thought, felt and did, and what happened as a result — well, it’s more complicated and somehow not his. He did not think about this and is not ready to answer for the result. That is why business people and especially leaders love results: those who know how to set goals for themselves, are focused on results and know how to achieve results.

At work, if you ask the resultant “How was your day?”, the resultant will sum up “What things were done” (exactly done, brought to the result!) And he tries to formulate the result specifically, in numerical form. For example: answered 7 letters, made 4 calls, held three meetings (negotiations), two of them were successful. The result is specific.

As a rule, in business, for the most responsible positions, first of all, results are sought, because they are the ones who are able to give results.

When applying for a job, you can distinguish between a result worker and a process worker by asking, for example, the question: “How do you see yourself in three years?” The process manager will say: “I will be respected, I will have an interesting job.” — “I will be the head of the sales department” — the answer of the resultant. The process worker, of his own free will, does not write a work plan and tasks for the day, he floats from event to event, the result worker usually has a written business plan for today. If you teach the process worker, he will also write the cases for the day, but his cases and the cases of the result worker sound different. On paper (or in Outlook), both can be written briefly: “Ivanov”, “Petrov”, “Meeting”, but their oral transcripts are usually different. The process worker will explain: “Phone Ivanov. Talk to Petrov. Have a meeting.» The resultant will tell the same things for the day in a different way: “Squeeze Ivanov to the order. Obtain information from Petrov. At the meeting, give impetus to the project.

There are other external signs that are more common for a process worker: he does not keep the format, his body and face usually rattle, there is less clarity in speech compared to the resultant, it is difficult to speak in theses, more junk words, unnecessary details and repetitions.

By greatly simplifying, you can give the most elementary tips on how to decide who is in front of you, a process worker or a result worker. First: male or female? If a woman is more of a process worker. If it’s a man, it’s unclear. Second: position? If an ordinary employee is more likely a process worker. If the leader is still unclear. Third, look at the body and, most importantly, the eyes. If the body is clear, and the eyes hold the interlocutor inseparably, the result is confident. Otherwise, look further.

There are fewer result workers in life, our usual environment is process workers. You may have realized that the features of a process worker are also characteristic of you. And what to do? How to transform yourself from a process worker into a result worker? You can start with the following steps.

Motivation. Write down in clear and concise terms why you decided to exit the process state. Make a poster out of this and hang it in a prominent place.

Start monitoring your speech. You need to keep track of the intonation with which you speak. Accurate, clear, definite, intelligible: not a river flows, but cubes line up. Imagine every word you are going to say. “The lonely sail turns white in the blue fog of the sea” … Consider this sail. What is its shape? What shade of white do you see? How far is the sail from you? Listen to your every wording, words are actions. Watch your words, answering yourself the questions “why” and “what” I say.

If you are working at a distance, pay attention to the «Theses» exercise, namely the item «Listening to the interlocutor, I note the change of theses and the withdrawal into feelings.» When you work it out, it will be easier to notice when you yourself swim from topic to topic and when you go into feelings … The result will be to stay on the right topic, speak and act more consciously.