Volume 3, Issue 9 - September 2002

Getting Things Done
Through Others

Have you ever asked someone to do something for you, and you were disappointed with the results? I have! When I look back at the original request, everything seems quite clear to me, yet in the end, it is obviously not.

Some people have different working styles as well as different working standards. That's where we run into problems when we work with others.

In "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" Stephen Covey talks about "Beginning with the end in mind". Basically, that means to begin with the final picture. What does it look like? Describe things in a visual manner… so they can "see" what you are hoping to accomplish.

Where many of us go wrong is in the steps to get to the final picture. We don't necessarily have to tell them exactly how to get there, just where we want to be at the end.

For example, when I was a girl growing up, I lived in the country. Now I tell jokes about me growing up in the country, but a very real thing that we did do was use the clothes line to dry our clothes. 12 months of the year! Yes, we had a dryer, but mom preferred the clothes line (that nice smell, you know). Well, one very, very cold Ottawa winter day (and you know how cold it can get in Canada!), mom asked me to hang the clothes out on the line. I hated hanging stuff out in the winter. When you bring your Levi's in from outside in the winter, you can stand them up in the corner… and they still aren't dry…they are frozen! So, like all kids, I put up the token fuss. Not only did I hate hanging clothes up in the winter, my mom had a certain way that clothes needed to be hung up to dry. You were to hang the shirts with the shirts (upside down, too), the pants with the pants (matched at the seams, upside down), the underwear all together, and socks paired and hung together. According to mom, "this is the way it must be done".

On this particular day I was more concerned with getting the clothes on the line before all my fingers fell off. So what did I do? I hung them up in any order, just to get them hung on the line. After all, that is what I was asked to do, right?

When I came back into the house, mom gave me one of those "mom" looks and asked how I could be finished so quickly. Then she did a turn, and looked out the window at the clothes line. At that point she lost it! According to her, I did it all wrong.

My point in this argument was that she asked me to hang the clothes on the line. The final result should be that the clothes come back in the house dry. That is how I interpreted those instructions. So when the clothes that I hung up come back in was she going to be able to tell that her pants dried between two pieces of dad's underwear? No. The final result was what she wanted… dry clothes.

We need to be clear on the final result. In this case… dry clothes. Does it matter how they get that way? In this case the answer is no.

Let's say the task is answering the phone. In this situation, how that task gets done might very well matter. It does need to be answered by the second ring, and it needs to be answered by saying, "ABC Company, Rhonda speaking. How may I help you?"

If I were to ask you to answer the phone… is that clear enough? Knowing that people have different work styles and standards, the answer would be "No, that isn't enough." My boys don't like to answer the phone, and recently I was expecting a call from a friend and I had to pop outside for a minute. I asked my son, Christopher, who is almost 11, to answer the phone and after much grumbling he said he would. I asked him to answer the phone. What the person got on the other end of the phone was, "Hello, who is this?" Not exactly what I had in mind.

Begin with the end in mind. Don't worry about the details unless they affect the end result, or if the person asks for them. Be prepared to offer the details, it might just save the person time. Respect them if they don't want you detail.

So the next time you ask the kids to load the dishwasher… be clear on what that end result is. If the result is really to just get the dishes clean… does it matter how they get loaded?

Rhonda Scharf (Finniss), CSP is a Certified Professional Speaker, Trainer and Author and President of ON THE RIGHT TRACK - Training & Consulting and is available to deliver customized training programs or keynote speeches at your next convention. Call her today at 1-877-213-8608 or e-mail Rhonda@on-the-right-track.com. Why not take a moment and sign up here for her complimentary quarterly newsletter.