“Quality only happens when you care enough to do your best”.
Results through People is a philosophy that needs to be upheld and promoted by senior management for leaders at all levels (strategic, operational and tactical) in an organisation such as the Ghana Public Service. It emphasises that the key to optimising the potential of the organisation is creating a climate for people to do their best, both through establishing productive working relationships and by utilising appropriate skills and procedures to achieve the required results for the organisation.
Invariably, almost every management book on organisational development, human resource management and strategic human resource planning that one picks may have a chapter that infers that ‘people are the most important asset of every organisation’. As a result good, proactive and forward-looking companies value their people and help them to excel in all spheres of the organisation’s operations - engineering, technical, maintenance, production, quality management, procurement and contract management, marketing, supervision, financial management etc.
In this regard such companies try to attract and recruit high quality people, retain high performance people, foster a culture committed to organisation values and goals, develop and enhance leadership and management skills, develop a leading edge science and technology knowledge base, foster a commitment to health, safety and well-being.
Literature, the media, information dissemination platforms and related communication tools on corporate governance issues indicate that most organisation problems are people problems. And RtP workshops that are organised by most companies highlight the fact that the key to maximising potential of an organisation is managers and staff developing effective personal relationships both inside and outside the organisation.
We can all recognise and describe the skills we need but the gap between what we do and how we behave is often more significant than we realise. It is the gap between knowledge and behaviour that lies at the heart of mediocrity and under achievement in organisations.
If we continue to develop and, more importantly, regularly exercise those personal skills that increase motivation levels in others we help to raise their confidence and self-esteem. This leads to improved commitment levels and in turn to improved results.
And most of us can attest to the fact that people who feel good about themselves produce good results. Recognising and acting on the crucial link between self-image and commitment levels leads to a significantly increased capacity for individuals and, as a result, organisations to achieve the best possible outcomes.
In conclusion one could surmise that ‘Results through People’ (RtP) hinges on ‘Emotional Intelligence’ (EI) which is generally described as a set of abilities that refer in part to how effectively one deals with emotions both within oneself and others.
Daniel Goleman defines EI as “the capacity for recognising our feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships”.
Assistant Director, Professional Development, Australian Public Service.
Member, National Institute for Governance, Australia.
Views expressed by the author(s) do not necessarily reflect those of GhanaHomePage.
