Results Archives - understand-culture

Getting It Done

Get it done. This is a common instruction and a common compliment. The question is whether it happened, not how.

Whatever it takes. The method is left open. Only the result is fixed.

Let the results speak for themselves. The speaker would rather show the outcome than explain the effort.

Move the needle. Work that does not change the number does not count.

Hit your numbers. This is said of salespeople, managers and whole companies. The target is a figure, and it is either reached or missed.

Work smarter, not harder. Effort alone earns no credit. A better route to the same result earns praise.

An A for effort. This is said when the work was sincere but the result failed. It is a consolation, not a grade.

The Results-Only Work Environment

Around 2001 two human resources staff at Best Buy, Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, created the Results-Only Work Environment, or ROWE. It judged employees on their performance, “not their hours logged or on-site attendance.” Its rule was: “Results are the only measure.” The two founders later wrote a book about it.

In 2013 Best Buy ended ROWE during a corporate restructuring. A company spokesman explained: “Particularly in a turnaround, what matters is the ability of employees to collaborate and work together.”

Easier to Ask Forgiveness

“It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.” The line is usually credited to Grace Hopper, the computer pioneer and Navy rear admiral. She said versions of it often in the 1980s. In 1983 she put it this way: “On many occasions, especially in government, it’s easier to apologize than to get permission.”

The saying is older than her use of it. In 1977 a newspaper in Waycross, Georgia, quoted the evangelist Bob Mumford: “It is easier to get forgiveness than permission.” In 1983 a book on editing called it an old Army proverb.

You Are What Your Record Says You Are

“You are what your record says you are.” The line is credited to the football coach Bill Parcells. In January 1994 a newspaper column credited it to “a wise man with a bad football team and a Super Bowl ring.” That man was Parcells, then in his first year as coach of the New England Patriots.

The column’s point was that nobody wants to hear excuses about injuries, bad luck or a hard schedule. The line is older than Parcells’s use of it. The San Diego Union printed it in October 1978, under the headline “Chargers Get Foes’ Praise, Not Victories”: “You are what your record says you are, and never mind how you got that way.”

Life Hack

The term life hack was coined in 2004 at the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference in San Diego. It first meant the “scripts and shortcuts productive IT professionals use to get their work done.” In 2005 the American Dialect Society voted lifehack the runner-up for most useful word of the year, behind podcast.

The meaning soon spread beyond computers. A life hack is now “any trick, shortcut, skill, or novelty improvisation that increases productivity and efficiency in life.”

MacGyver

MacGyver ran on American television from 1985 to 1992. Its hero, Angus MacGyver, was played by Richard Dean Anderson. He carried a Swiss Army knife and duct tape instead of high-tech weapons. He regularly solved problems with whatever simple things he could find.

His name became a verb. Merriam-Webster defines MacGyver as “to make, form, or repair (something) with what is conveniently on hand.” The dictionary dates its first known use to 1992.

Improvise, Adapt, Overcome

“Improvise, adapt, overcome” is an unofficial motto of the US Marines. The earliest record that the word researcher Barry Popik found is the 1986 film Heartbreak Ridge. Clint Eastwood plays a Marine gunnery sergeant. He tells his men: “You’re Marines now. You adapt. You overcome. You improvise.”

Some writers say Marines used the words long before the film. Popik found no printed evidence for that. By April 1988 Jack Clark was quoting it: “It’s like Clint Eastwood said, ‘You’ve got to improvise, adapt and overcome.'”

Adequate Yearly Progress

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 set an ultimate goal. All students were to reach “proficient levels by 2014.” Schools were measured each year against a target called adequate yearly progress, or AYP. Education Week called AYP “the measure by which schools, districts, and states are held accountable for student performance.”

A school that missed AYP two years in a row was identified for improvement. More sanctions followed if it kept missing. In December 2015 the Every Student Succeeds Act replaced the law. It moved the federal accountability rules to the states.

The Government Performance and Results Act

On August 3, 1993, the Government Performance and Results Act became law. Congress found that “waste and inefficiency in Federal programs undermine the confidence of the American people in the Government.” The law promised “a new focus on results, service quality, and customer satisfaction.”

Every federal agency must write a strategic plan. Each year it reports to the President and Congress on how its programs performed. Performance goals are normally stated “in an objective, quantifiable, and measurable form.” A 2011 update added another step. The head of each agency must review progress on its priority goals every quarter.

The Reading Pipe Case

A builder put up a country house for more than $77,000. The contract called for pipe “of Reading manufacture.” Some of the pipe came from other factories. The owner refused to pay the last $3,483.46 until the pipe was replaced. The builder sued. The case, Jacob & Youngs v. Kent, was decided by the Court of Appeals of New York in 1921.

Judge Benjamin Cardozo ruled for the builder. Reading pipe differed from other brands “only by the name of the manufacturer stamped upon it.” Replacing it would cost a great deal. So the owner could claim only the difference in value, “which would be either nominal or nothing.”

The dissent said the owner “had a right to contract for what he wanted.” The majority used a different test: “We must weigh the purpose to be served.” American contract law calls the rule substantial performance.