Setting a challenging goal and marching towards it as a team is quint essential for delivery results. This value has to be a common thread across all organizations.

1. RAJAGOPALAN V
BUSINESS INTELLECTS
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Results Orientation as an essential value for all organizations
Continuing on with my Values Centric Organization article published
recently(http://www.slideshare.net/RajaVenkatachalam/value-centric-organization-1) , I wanted to
introduce you all to something that the leading semiconductor company Intel cherishes the most –
RESULTS ORIENTATION. The timing of this article is coincidentally a tribute to Andy Grove who died
today- the first employees of Intel after its two founders and later years its CEO, Holocaust survivor
from Hungary and a practical management guru. I salute you SIR.
As Intel describes it, it is set challenging and competitive goals and focus on the output by assuming
responsibility and executing flawlessly. Any issues or problems that come in between have to be solved
and confronted constructively and quickly to achieve the goal. Focusing your resources on the
important results is key for success and managing through people to create a positive impact for the
organizations is every manager’s priority. I do not see many organizations recognizing results
orientation as a critical value.
For all types of organization, be it a small privatly held one or a bigger public company or a
government establishment and even a not-for-profit one, delivering on your goals successfully is
essential. The leader in you should be able to push self and others to desired results and should
celebrate successes. The value of results orientation is the basis behind setting up a matrix
organization where every talent within the organization works for a product, solution or oriented
towards a service, from various functionalities. The entire team has to agree to a set of objectives
(remember SMART) and work together to achieve those with high quality. At the end of the day, the
products or services that the company sells or gives is the one that brands the company to the
customers. Even if you are in a research organization, it is critical that the development happening
inside is mapped to a product that they can sell eventually or a service that they can offer later.
Every employee should review the work they are doing regularly with their immediate management
and prioritize what is urgent and more important. Each employee needs to plan their work accordingly
to ensure that important goals get done within the required time. Be realistic at your workload when
you take on more work. As a manager, one must be aware of the stress levels within the team and try to
re-prioritize and re-distribute the workload within your team. It is a good practice to keep your ears to
the ground and actively listen to your team and to put some sense around what they say. Finally
celebrate small successes and the eventual ones.
In these Agile days of working, it is easier to have discrete sets of results achieved within a shorter
time span and corrective actions put in place for any deviations that happen. Three behaviours come
to the fore-front to achieve results: Effective time management, managing stress at work (there is
always going to be stress, you need to find your own ways to manage it properly) and good influencing
skills to get things done. From the HR perspective, a few tweaks must be in place so that they start
measuring the engagement and commitment levels of the employees to the programs they are in and to
the organizations, and monitor if key decisions are being made quickly by the managers and whether

2. RAJAGOPALAN V
BUSINESS INTELLECTS
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
they are putting undue stress on his or her employees to an extent that it affects results. Most metrics
should be taken at a project or program level and not at a horizontal functional level.
For those of you who have not got the privilege of the working for Andy Grove and living during the
times when he built Intel, I would highly recommend two books, “High Output Management” and “Only
Paranoids Survive”.
The Author is a business and technology consultant based in India and if also a former employee of Intel.
He also conducts leadership programs that are based on key values of organizations.