It’s easy to get caught up in your daily tasks between emails and meetings and not ask yourself a key question “Am I effective?” You may take it for granted that you are effective. You may equate being busy or efficient with being effective. I find it useful to step away from my typical day and ask myself this question to challenge my preconceived notion.

Being effective is largely about delivering results. If you have clear priorities for which you know you are responsible, you are effective when you deliver results against those priorities. If you are efficient (using your time wisely, not wasting effort) you can still be ineffective (if you work on the wrong things). Being effective requires that you know what the most important results the organization - or your boss - requires of you. Write down two or three high-priority items the organization expects from you this quarter.

Assessing your effectiveness can be as straightforward as “am I delivering results against the priorities that the organization expects from me?” The organization may expect you to lead a development team and deliver working software each sprint. You may be expected to create a new team and launch a new product. Or you may be expected to increase the volume or quality of working software your team produces each sprint. Can you articulate one of the most important results expected from you?

Consider all the activities you perform that do not deliver results against these priorities. You might think “well of course I get credit for reading all my e-mails or attending all my meetings.” In truth, these are not high-priority tasks. The organization will not reward you for e-mails read or meetings attended. Managing administrative tasks that must be done is about ensuring these tasks do not keep you from delivering on your “very important” results.

Take one of those very-important items expected of you and ask yourself “what results have I delivered in the last 60 days on that item?” Has your team continually delivered the working software as expected, or have there been missed sprints or releases? Has the quality or volume of the working software you have delivered met the expectations? Do you have measures or data in place to know whether you have delivered results against the very important items? Can you describe it to your boss succinctly? Even better in a way your boss could describe to the CEO related to the impact on the business?

Take moment to conduct a quick assessment of your effectiveness:

Write down two or three high priority responsibilities you have this quarter
Write down two or three demonstrable results you have delivered against each priority
Frame the results in terms that demonstrate business impact
Bonus: Share this with your boss and ask for feedback