While this to-do-list-driven thinking may help distribute various activities to different team members, it does not necessitate the achievement of organizational goals.

As Peter Drucker explains, “Productivity for the knowledge worker means the ability to get the right things done. It means effectiveness. Knowledge work is defined by its results.” As is always the case with to-do lists: they drive towards actions, not results.

Results planning doesn’t require another internal document, but a mindset your organization can adopt. With this new mindset, you and your organization will:

• Stay perpetually connected to a larger, shared vision
• Evaluate complex problems with higher understanding
• Conduct shorter meetings (this is benefit enough!)
• Make smarter, quicker decisions
• Be more effective at operating as a collective whole, serving your customers, and growing your business

How do you adopt a Results-Planning mindset?

1. Continuously ask the question: What is the result we are going to achieve? Cultivate a culture that values investing time envisioning the big picture instead of jumping into an endless series of to-do-list driven activities.
2. Next, ask: What are the conditions that need to be set in order to realize our desired result? Now, brainstorm and strategically think through the issue while keeping the end result firmly in mind.

While these two questions might seem simple, consistent and effective execution is extremely difficult.

But here’s the good news: Any progress you and your organization make towards a Results-Planning mindset will measurably improve your business over time. (I’ve had the privilege of witnessing the positive effects with over a dozen enterprises I’ve worked with.)

Related posts:

1. How to get the results you want
2. Five Habits of the Effective Executive
3. Results Thinking for Clarity and Direction

While a checklist for groceries can be useful when food shopping, using to-do lists in your business activities is not only inefficient, but it often plants the “seed of your own destruction.” To-do lists guarantee busyness without necessitating achievement and results.

There’s nothing “wrong” with being busy. In fact, as a quality of consciousness, it’s innate to our humanness. If we are unable to transcend this primal ego drive, however, we greatly limit our creativity. The general lack of creativity in the majority of mankind is a testament to this animalistic drive.

Locked in this endless pattern of activity, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to maintain the “big picture” perspective. High-level evaluation and doorways to creative inspiration are closed to the person overwhelmed by continual activity.

The wise transcend the survival instinct that often hinders our ability to manifest creatively.

Spend less time asking What do I need to do next? and invest more time connecting, exploring, and clarifying the bigger picture. If you do, you’ll find the to-dos tend to take care of themselves effortlessly.

Related posts:

1. Adopt a New Results Mindset at Work
2. The Capital of Creativity
3. Dancing with Creativity