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Figure out your results expectations

What should your results expectations be? To figure out your results expectations, or to help your employees identify the results expected of them, you could assume one or more of the following four perspectives:

  • What are the higher-level goals and how can you contribute to their achievement? What is expected of you is ultimately related to the mission or top-level goals of your agency. Your work contributes to, or certainly should contribute to, the achievement of these high level goals.
  • Who are your customers and what are their requirements? In your role you have customers (every job does) and it is their requirements that determine your results expectations. Your customers may be internal (other employees or work units that you serve) or external (citizens or outside groups that you serve).
  • What are your key responsibilities and what results do they require that you produce? Your job description identifies the important tasks that you are expected to perform as part of your role. Although responsibilities in a job description are usually not written in terms of results (they are phrased more in terms of things that you do, the tasks you perform), they are often used as the basis for defining results expectations.
  • What processes can be improved and how will you know if your improvement efforts are effective? In a performance culture, it is important to continuously look for ways to improve procedures, remove bureaucratic roadblocks, and better satisfy the public’s needs and your agency’s mandate – in other words, to do the job faster, better, cheaper. Therefore, at any given time, you may be involved in projects to improve processes, and the successful completion of the projects becomes a results expectation for you.

Use the following questions to zero in on the results expectations that apply to your job. Some of these questions may make more sense than others, depending on what your job is. There is no need to answer all the questions. Just focus on the ones that make sense for your job. Use the questions to help “shake out” the most important results expectations:

Higher-level goals

What results should I be producing in order to help my boss, the managers above my boss, and my agency’s executives achieve the results they are accountable for?


What is the mission of my agency and how does my job contribute to the successful carrying out of this mission?

How will anyone know if I am making an appropriate contribution? How will anyone know if I am adding value?

Customers

Who are my customers (internal and/or external)?

What do my customers require of me?

How will they know if I am meeting their requirements? How will I know?

Key responsibilities (from the job description)

What are my key responsibilities? What am I, by statute, required to do?

How will anyone know if I am carrying out my responsibilities effectively?

What major improvements are needed in the way the work gets done?

How will anyone know if an improvement has been made?

Now, what are your results expectations? Scan your responses to the above questions. What are the three to seven most important results that are expected of you in your job?

 
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