Doing the Right Thing Vs Doing Things Right

There is a fundamental difference between doing things right and doing the right things. But between doing things right and doing the right things, which one is more important? From a philosophic point of argument and applying to a real-life business context, it would be ideal for working towards doing the right things first, then do them right. Doing things right is equal to being efficient while doing the right things is equal to being effective. While it is agreeable that doing things right and doing the right things are two distinct terms, it would also be reasonable that we specifically pick one and stick to it and sacrifice the other ( Stack, 2016) . With both concepts being critical, it is essential that a business or an individual is not being hooked to doing things right, and as a result, must not focus on procedures and processes alone.

Peter Drucker, in his famous quotes, emphasizes that “ management is doing things right, enhancing operations performance, minimizing expenses, and maximizing revenues while at the same time increasing the customer appreciation and artistic production values. ” Drucker further concludes that “ leadership is doing the right things, putting in place the company priorities and allocating fiscal and human resources to meet the company’s vision. ” These quotes mean that being a leader in an organization is not just about executing the laid down procedures. Leadership goes further than a management role. In short, a leader has to identify the right tasks to accomplish, believe that they are doing the right thing, and use the appropriate procedure to accomplish these tasks.

In their wisdom, Falkheimer et al. (2016) observe that within a few years of any corporation, majority of the managers lose their essential roles and mission, and instead they focus on efficiency or methods or procedures, instead of focusing on the primary objective. This statement further emphasizes that it is important that we do not prioritize ‘ doing things right ’ over ‘ doing the right things .’ This is a justification that a true leader must first organize his or her house, put his mission and objectives ahead of everything else, and focus on the big goal. A leader must focus on ‘doing the right things’ and allow the supporting managers ‘to do things right’ by ensuring the procedures are followed. 

Therefore, for an organization and in general life, it is more important to do the right things first, then do them right. Leaders in general, are the people who go first, followed by their subjects. The leaders motivate their subjects to follow suit. In that sense, for one to be a good and ‘effective’ leader, the leader must be aware of the ‘right things to do’ instead of focusing on the procedures. Doing things right is not the perfect way to do things because one would end up following the laid down processes and forget the direction or where they are supposed to go. Doing the right thing entails pointing out and modifying efficiency and company effectiveness. When there is a problem, or when something is not right, doing the right thing gives birth to wrongdoers, wrong things being achieved correctly, or mischievous activities being completed.

In several occasions, doing things right is another form of opting for the easy way out, or forgetting to look at the long-term goals and focus on the short-term goals. And due to the easy nature of doing things right, most people prefer to take the shortcut, including employees and focus on doing things rights alone. However, it is interesting to discover that doing the right things means that one must have the appropriate character and the confidence to stand for their purpose, mission, hat they believe in and where they are going.

Strategic thinking and tactical thinking can also be used to explain the difference between ‘ doing the right things ’ versus ‘ doing things right. ’ Doing things right is the tactical approach to accomplishing tasks. Tactical approach refers to anything that ranges from providing good customer services, cleaning the floors to the process of hiring good employees in an organization. Most people who have achieved some success in their careers or success in business are primarily good at tactical approaches to thinking. These people only achieved this success because of doing things right. While the tactical approach is required, it takes more effort compared to the strategic approach to thinking, doing the right things.

Strategic thinking involves preparing and planning for long-term objectives to ensure sustainability. When doing the right things, there is no immediate reward or success. Examples of doing the right things include creating company policies affecting the employee paid time off or creating a ten-year financial budget to go side to side with the company’s ten-year strategic growth plan. Therefore, it is important to ask the question; if a business is busy working on its production, operations and the daily activities, how will the business owner know when the effort, time and money spent has not been placed on the most important factor in the business, career, etc. It is therefore very critical that individuals, business owners, employees, etc. assess oneself to understand whether they are productive.

“ Doing right things ” refers to planning in advance and preparing for the future so that one does not “ do wrong things .” When an individual is building his career, it is essential that the person becomes efficient and be forward-thinking in terms of the path they want to follow. However, it is important that the individual yields good results along the way. It is, therefore very important to consider that for one to be successful, they need to both “ do the right things ” and “ do things right. ” Therefore, doing things right can be equated to implementing the vision; however, before an individual implement anything, they must first have a vision, then put this vision to work.

Doing the right things constitutes doing things efficiently. That means accomplishing tasks at the highest possible quality and lowest possible cost, within the constraints of the available resources. However, doing this alone may not be sufficient because organizations are always in competition with each other, and they are required to do the right things. For example, for the organizations that have a ‘competitive edge or strategies,’ are at an advantage and normally beats the competition. Therefore, a leader decides to only do the most appropriate things in order of priority and for strategic success. The leader also involves his or her subjects to execute their vision through the appropriate tactics as laid down in the action plan. 

The best way to distinguish between ‘ doing right things ’ and ‘ doing the right things ’ is to use a real-life personal experience as an example. My friend, fictitious name Joe, owns a company. He currently acts as the Managing Director, and he openly shares his company experiences with me as a friend and for consultations. 

One of Joe’s employees, Mr. Y, was demanding that Joe give him a job promotion accompanied by a rise in salary. Mr. Y was working as an IT technician and wanted to be made the IT Department manager after the person holding the office move to a bigger company. However, according to Joe, there were several other employees in the IT Department who were better performers compared to Mr. Y and also deserved the position. Joe had the option to tell-off Mr. Y to make things right, but this could, in the long-term, worsen things for the company. If Joe could have disheartened Mr. Y, he could easily opt for alternative companies to work for because his experience would be in demand, and he could also opt to let out the company secrets to the competitors. 

Instead, Joe decided to do the right things. He came up with certain tasks relating to the IT Department job descriptions. All the IT Department employees were asked to participate in a competition ( Elebring, Gill, & Plowright, 2012) . There were specific performance indicators that Joe pointed out, that the employee who emerges top would be promoted and give a pay rise. This was not only a fair chance to all the employees in the department, but this approach would also end up giving valuable information as to the worth of every employee. In the end, Mr. Y ended up winning the competition. He had shown his worth and that he deserves the position, and he really wanted this. According to the rules of the competition, Mr. Y was promoted, and his salary raised. All other employees were fine with this, and they congratulated him. 

This is a lesson that doing things right is never the long-term approach to accomplishing tasks. Joe could have easily given the job to the employee he thought deserved the job, which could have led to a rise of many challenges. For example, Mr. Y could leave, the department could be disgruntled, and the junior employees may end up not respecting the person handpicked by the MD. A manager teaches his employees to climb the success ladder faster, a good leader will check whether the ladder of success is placed on the right wall and will lead to the right roof. Therefore, it is more appropriate to “do the right things” first. 

Appendix 

References

Elebring, T., Gill, A., & Plowright, A. T. (2012). What is the most important approach in current drug discovery: doing the right things or doing things right?  Drug discovery today ,  17 (21-22), 1166-1169. 

Falkheimer, J., Heide, M., Simonsson, C., Zerfass, A., & Verhoeven, P. (2016). Doing the right things or doing things right?  Corporate Communications: An International Journal . 

Stack, L. (2016).  Doing the right things right: How the effective executive spends time . Berrett-Koehler Publishers.