So, What would You Like to Know?
How did we create the results-oriented job description, and become proponents of results-oriented management?
We were sitting at our kitchen table in March, 1976 in a Chicago suburb trying to figure out how Sandy would manage a new venture of 200 employees. Specifically, she wanted to streamline and connect writing job advertisements, interviewing job applicants, orienting and training new employees, monitoring and appraising performance, and determining pay. We could find no such management tool at the time.
Roger was in the midst of a consulting project looking at a troubled performance appraisal system, including inadequate job descriptions.
Using a secretary's job, we listed (in the fashion of the time) the "things" a secretary might "do," such as: "Types documents." We looked at this responsibility in each of the job actions Sandy would have to manage.
One of us--we don't remember who--said, "Wait a minute. A secretary can type and type and type and still never produce the document we want." Typing, we recognized, was not the key element to be measured. What was missing in the statement of accountability was an emphasis on the result required. So, we wrote:
PREPARES DOCUMENTS
by
typing.
The Results-Oriented Job Description was born!