'What' you achieve comes second to 'how' you get it

This means that once the objectives of a certain individual were met or exceeded, he or she could walk away with the "fully met" or "exceed" rating. How the achievement was obtained was accorded far less importance.

This old system has major flaws. It has been challenged and changed in most big companies in the past few years. What was introduced to the system is the importance of "how" in the rating, which now goes side by side with the rating of "what".

Focusing only on "what", more often than not, proved that the achievement was unsustainable. People in the organisation will focus on delivering the numbers or objectives, but lack the quality that the organisation needs to have to win in the long run.

Here is an example of what happens to companies that only focus on "what", without taking in the importance of "how". Picture this: Your financial controller closed the books perfectly but caused annoyance to most people, inside and outside the company.

So, to win in the long term, multinationals are now pushing for the importance of "how", making it formal and visible. For example, Diageo, the organisation I am part of, has implemented a performance-assessment system of 4X2 matrix, wherein "how" was put into the template and its importance goes hand in hand with "what". The attaining of "what" is divided into four categories: underachieved, mostly achieved, fully achieved and overachieved. Achievement of "how" is divided into two categories: meets and below.

Therefore, the rating of "how" can have serious implications on the overall rating. For example, an employee may overachieve on "what", but with a below achievement on "how", will have his or her overall rating downgraded to fully achieved instead of overachieved.

How the goal was achieved is important to the sustainable success of an organisation. Most companies now put "how" in the formal evaluation process, side by side with "what", making the expectation of "how" clear to each individual early on.

So, has your organisation implemented this? If not, the you need to catch up with the rest of the world.

Vorathep Rangchaikul is president of Diageo Moet Hennessy (Thailand). Follow his article the third Friday of every month.