The Six Key Practices of Personal Effectiveness provide a behavioural framework that enables staff to manage and improve their own effectiveness, thus allowing them to systematically increase their effectiveness maturity, regardless of their role or position in the organisation.
Most organisations understand the need for Efficiency in creating competitive advantage. In order to leverage this advantage, all levels of the organisation must be efficiency conscious.
It is our view that the next competitive advantage™ will come from Effectiveness, with all levels of the successful organisation practising personal effectiveness as a matter of course.
Many people in an organisation can be effective through their own efforts at least some of the time.
More often than not they require guidance from somebody such as their supervisor or manager to enable them to contribute successfully and consistently. Flat organisational structures can reduce the time available for managers and supervisors to provide this support, which can easily be neglected through other work pressures. It would be far better for those staff to be trained in being more personally effective themselves, thus bringing effective practices daily to the work activity itself.
Some people are able to transfer a successful approach from one task or project to another task or project even though the new task or project may differ in some ways. It would be far better for staff to have a framework which they can adapt to any situation, essentially making effective behaviour more easily repeatable.
Even fewer people are able to define why they seem to have a knack at knowing the right thing to do, making decisions which are stable, and being able to go into new situations with confidence in their ability to handle these. It would be far better if more individuals in today's continually changing organisation were able to do this.
More rare are those who understand why they are effective and practice personal effectiveness almost as a motor skill. Such people usually populate the higher levels of an organisation. It would be far better if this ability permeated all staff levels.
The key issue is that personal effectiveness must be learned by the majority of the organisation, and particularly those who regularly exercise some form of discretion in their work. Today's organisations need to have speed, flexibility and focus. These cannot be achieved without individuals, and groups of individuals who work together, being effective.
It is crucial that an organisation consciously improves the effectiveness maturity of all of its staff who exercise discretion in their work, so that an effectiveness culture exists throughout the organisation.
