The Need for Key Area Identification

You need to be in control of your job, knowing what to do, when to do it and what results you want. Such a situation is easier to work in, gives more satisfaction and is less tiring than the reverse.

The person working in an uncontrolled situation is constantly pulled and pushed by external factors, such as telephone calls, messages, crises, odd bits of paper etc.

The result is frustration, pressure, irritation and fatigue.

You can improve control of your job through a combination of Key Area Identification and Setting Objectives.

If we just look at the activities we do in our job, it will probably appear as a confusing jumble, a substance without apparent structure or form.

It is useful to divide a job into 4 sub-divisions:

• The job itself
• The Key Areas
• The tasks within each Key Area
• The activities performed in carrying out each task

The Key Area only indicates the ends or outputs aimed at. It does not specify goals, or how much by when. For example, an analogy:

The kitchen indicates preparation of food, but not what we are to cook and when the meal will be ready.

It is only when you move onto Objective Setting , subsequent to completion of this section, that you will be concerned with setting yourself targets of what you want to achieve in each Key Area, how you will measure progress and when.

The Key Areas identified must also encompass the whole job, nothing should be left out or we do not get a true picture.

Key Areas must also encompass your own span of authority and responsibility and not include that of other people. There must be a clear division of what is yours and what is your neighbours or suffer claims of "trespass".

One of the secrets of success is to use few words to describe a key area, 3 to 4 appears ideal. These are nouns and adjectives, but almost never verbs.

We are not in a position to decide action as yet, we are only isolating those areas where we are ultimately going to take action. For example "Kitchen eight by four" describes the area, "Prepare food", describes the purpose.

• Noun - Specifies Key Area
• Adjective - Describes it

[Verb - indicates action - NOT APPROPRIATE for Key Area Identification]

Ask yourself the questions What? Who? Where? and not When? or How Much?

For example, a Training Officer must have "training" as a Key Area, but this is too broad, we must define it more clearly by asking:

• Who? eg Management Training or Operator Training.
• or Where? eg Sales Management Training or North Works Operator Training.

And finally, the last problem to concern ourselves with, is the number of Key Areas in our job. There must be some form of limit, either from the job content itself or the number we can reasonably be expected to cope with.

The limit is seven "Key Areas".

This is quite enough to cope with, any more will overload the incumbent. We may identify more than seven potential Key Areas, but for practical reasons as explained, they must be reduced, prioritised or combined to give a maximum of seven, or less, if possible.

As a summary, these are the main points that you need to remember when you are trying to identify Key Areas:

1. We must be in control of our job NOT vice versa.
2. To do this we must know what is expected of us.
3. Before setting ourselves targets we must identify Key Areas.
4. These do not define results only areas where results must be achieved.
5. They must reflect the whole job.
6. Must not overstep own authority/responsibility.
7. Should be brief, 3 to 4 words.
8. Composed of nouns and adjectives.
9. They must not be more than 7 in total.
10. It also goes without saying that they must be unambiguous.