Results-driven
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Crappy advice you find on LinkedIn™
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The accountants’ favourite chocolatier (and our second favourite chocolatier, after our own in-house chocolatiers, Les Frères Maple) Marc de Marquette, tells us:
“Marc is driven by results and no better way for him to demonstrate his excellence than winning awards for his creations and his clients.”
Not to pick on Monsieur de Marquette — some bored copyrighter most likely put those words in his mouth, and look: he’s a chocolate guy, not a marketing guy — but we wonder what he, or any of the dreary multitudes driven to apply this sodden phrase in self-description on their LinkedIn profiles — can possibly mean.
For how can one be propelled by the expected outcome of one’s own propulsion? This is surely to put the cart before the horse.
Given that a “result”, of some kind, is the thermodynamic expectation of every application of force to object, however ill-advised, we wonder what people think they are establishing by claiming to be “results-driven”.
The captain of the Hindenburg got results, after all. So did the deputy chief engineer at Chernobyl. And Dick Fuld. Just not particularly good ones.
So unless your industry is to distinguish yourself from those with whom you work who have no discernible impact on the world, good or ill — in fairness, that’s a great number of people — then you might want to put something a little more specific in your professional autobiography than “results-driven”.
Or just lie about it. And if you can’t even do that — well: are you having a discernible impact?