I’m often asked at what point leaders can stop focusing on outcomes. The argument I hear is that some people’s jobs, especially those lowest in the organization, are just about executing tasks.

I disagree. Even the most transactional activities have outcomes – otherwise why bother doing them?

Every task, no matter how small, is done for a purpose. A call center operator’s job isn’t just to complete a call. That transaction should achieve something – it needs to satisfy the customer’s need in a way that is efficient and cost effective to your business. Ideally it should make the customer feel better about your business than before they called. Those are outcomes. How many times have you called a support line for help and hung up feeling no better off (or even worse off) than when you started?

When you don’t explicitly state an outcome your people don’t have clarity on what they are trying to achieve. As a result, they use completion of the task as the measure of success.

These “micro” outcomes are what make or break your business. After all, your “major” outcomes are all built upon the success of each individual transaction and interaction.

If you cannot think of an appropriate outcome for a task or deliverable, stop and take a step back. You might not fully understand why that task is being done or why that deliverable is being created in the first place.

And if you don’t know, neither do your people.

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Brad Kolar is the President of Kolar Associates, a leadership consulting and workforce productivity consulting firm. He can be reached at brad.kolar@kolarassociates.com.