What are the goals for your role?
Every role in an organization has goals & deliverables linked to it. True for those tracking market trends, servicing clients, managing facilities, delivering IT systems, or lobbying with public bodies.
Understanding the output expected from your role, and focusing your efforts to it are essential for your success as well as durability of your job.
Let us look at some of the prominent role categories in an organization and the top few outcomes or output expected of them
Market making roles
1. Roles responsible for market, consumer & competitive intelligence – You are the eyes & ears of the company tracking consumer and competitive trends which create opportunities or potential risks to your business.
The output expected from you is – where are the opportunities to sell more, introduce new offerings, or get better pricing for existing offerings. Reciprocally where are the potential risks to sales growth, pricing yield, and new product introductions.
Your measure is the number & scale of new opportunities identified to grow or defend revenue and improve yield.
2. Product design / development / management – It is your role to envision and create new product or service offerings for your organization as well as enhance existing ones.
You will be assessed by the new revenue or profit streams you create through product introduction or improvement
Your measures are revenue and profit growth of product lines.
3. Business development and & sales –You are tasked with identifying, shaping and winning new business with one or a group of clients.
Your deliverable is the insight into buying intent of your identified market, leading the sales cycle and winning new business.
Yours measures are business pipeline created and orders booked.
4. Roles engaging external influencers & bodies – You are responsible for influencing external entities to be favorable to your organization. These could be industry or government entities, analysts, board members, or opinion leaders whose views & actions can be facilitate or otherwise to your company.
Your deliverables are to ensure that their views and actions are favorable to the success of your company, and that they do not create situations through regulation or public policy which disrupt the momentum of your business.
Your measures are media & policy outcomes which are favorable to business growth & margins.
Roles engaged in output of product & services
5. Product (service) manufacturing and delivery – It is your role to ensure that the product or service which your organization offers is built and delivered well and ensures client delight.
Your deliverables are on spec, quality, budget, and time delivery and in a manner that creates high customer satisfaction.
Your measures are CSAT, and on spec, time, and budget delivery of your product or service.
6. Supply chain engagement (including people supply chain & finance supply chain) - You are responsible for ensuring that the resources (products, services, human resources, money) which your organization requires from external sources are available to it.
Your deliverable is ensuring your organization gets the materials (services) it needs – in time, spec and at a price competitive with peers.
Your measures are on time availability, on spec, & at competitive pricing
Roles monitoring and facilitating operations
7. Accounting – In a broader sense these are roles which measure and record organization activities - financial performance, client or vendor engagement, output of goods or services, and any other activity which the organization measures and tracks.
Your deliverables are timeliness and accuracy of information, and to highlight trends which point to areas of opportunity to improve performance or risks for the organization.
Your measures are – trends highlighted which can be actionable to improve business outcomes, and the accuracy / timeliness of business information
8. Facilities management – You have responsibility for the facilities which the organization uses to run its business. These could be plant and machinery, buildings, IT systems, communications infrastructure - the inanimate infrastructure which enables the successful functioning of your organization.
Your deliverable is availability of those facilities and that they deliver the expected performance / functionality at a competitive cost.
Your measures are – availability and uptime of facilities and at a competitive cost
9. HR – You have responsibility for the health and wellbeing of the human assets deployed by it in the different parts of the business. These assets could be employees, interns, contractors, and with the heightened sensitivity to global supply chain behavior – employees of our vendor partners as well.
Your deliverable is delivering high levels of employee engagement at a competitive cost.
Your measures are ESAT, and the competitiveness of cost of human capital vs. competition
In closing
Organizations have a spectrum of roles. Each of them is expected to deliver an output.
Understanding what that output or outcomes are and focusing your efforts to delivering them are critical for success and longevity in any role.
Some of the key roles in an organization and their measures are summarized below
Know your role, understand, focus and deliver on the goals to ensure success in your career
Keep swinging!
