About Purpose is about your purpose.
Aim: Identify and articulate your purpose.
Arm: Shape yourself around your purpose.
Act: Achieve your purpose.
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Self Evaluation
Bob Ryan, About Purpose, Inc. ©2005
We start out the meeting the same way every two weeks – with a self-evaluation of how we delivered our service the last two weeks. Can’t we just skip that and get right into the planning for the next two weeks?
I volunteer as a worship leader for our church – leading the music, trying to make smooth transitions between parts of the Sunday service, and holding up the theme and vision for that week’s topic. We have a planning team of four that meets every other week. Our self-evaluation is necessary since we plan a lot of variety into our services. Some things work very well and some things FLOP! We may have been really excited as we planned a particular skit or song or video, only to find that it just didn’t accomplish our goals on Sunday morning. Only by taking a good, hard look at ourselves can we keep improving and delivering strong, uplifting services week after week.
How often do you perform self-evaluation in your business? How often do you take even a few moments to examine your delivery – good or bad – and take purposeful lessons from what you’ve learned?
Start out your next staff meeting with one or more of these questions:
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“What went really well this week?” |
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“In what way did we ‘delight’ our customers?” |
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“Is there anything we’ve been doing right by accident, that we should do on purpose from now on?” |
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“What went wrong and what can we learn from it for next time?” |
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“How can we top our best performance?” |
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“What comments did we hear that we can build into our planning?” |
One of my TAB members* challenged our board with a new approach he’s taking. He identified a particularly customer-centered planning approach. He visualized a superb relationship with his customers. He imagined what service they were getting, what products they were thrilled with, and the relationships they had with his staff. Then he began to work backwards, shaping his product line, staffing, and administrative procedures to fit that “perfect” picture of the future. (*Tom Fruth, Aroma Distribution Division)
Another member** took a more quantitative approach. He devised a survey form and gave it to a dozen people he trusted who were NOT current customers and asked them to go to his shop anonymously and later give their feedback on the items on the form. The items included things like shop appearance, responsiveness and expertise of the staff, timeliness of the order, etc. He chose things that he himself was less likely to see because of being too close for so many years. In other words, he took a fresh look at his business through others’ eyes. (**Stev Stegner, Rapid Press Printing and Copy Center)
Don’t put off self-evaluation. Find a method that works for your business and just do it. Learn what you can about the good and the bad. And then make sure you do something to benefit from what you’ve learned.