It’s What You Deliver That Matters

I recently played golf with someone I didn’t know prior to our playing together.  As we walked down the first fairway, he asked, “What do you do?” Asking people what they do is a polite and socially acceptable way of getting to know them.  It’s completely normal and completely appropriate. But in the workplace, what you do is not as important as what you deliver.

“Doing” is about action and activity; “deliver” is about what is handed over to someone after the doing is done.  Generally the things handed over are products (things like reports, computers, invoices, software), services (like training, consulting, appointments, performance reviews), and communications (requests, promises, authorizations).  For example, one of the things I do as a professor is teach classes.  What I deliver are lectures, presentations, exams, assignments, reading lists, and grades.

My students interact with the products, services, and communications I deliver to them.  If I deliver poorly worded exam questions, they don’t care much about the work that went into writing them, only that they have a hard time trying to figure the questions out.  If my lectures are unintelligible and hard to understand, my students don’t care what I had to do to prepare them.  Ultimately my performance in the classroom is determined by what I deliver to my students, not all the things I do in preparing the class.

I have learned that what really matters to people is what gets deliver.  When what is delivered to people “works” (meets their requirements in terms of form, quality, quantity, and time), they are satisfied and more likely to see the deliverer as a credible and reliable performer.  However, when what is delivered doesn’t work, people get upset, complain, and can even retaliate by becoming less cooperative.