The other day, I found myself in an intense conversation with a board member of a company I am currently working with about a particular employee who we both agreed was working hard, yet not getting any results. The obvious question was why, and the less obvious question was does he need to be replaced. This was in the context of his compensation and equity ownership that he had acquired without any measurable, tangible results over a 10-month period. Our conclusion? His process and approach were flawed, and therefore the results were not being demonstrated in a reasonable period of time- even though he easily worked a 50-60 hour week.
In our culture, we are taught that hard work pays off and often rewarded for it, and more to the point, no one is born with or has enough innate talent to be successful in school, sports, business or whatever their passion is without putting in the commensurate effort. It takes effort, but I would argue the right kind of focused and mindful effort. In this particular business situation, the manager of the business was lacking transparency in his communication with all stakeholders- other members of the management team, the board of directors (of which he was one out of five), the shareholders, the corporate attorney, and most disturbingly, his potential customers. People who lack transparency aren’t wired to ask for help and other people’s opinions because they oftentimes want to take all the credit themselves- I refer to it as performance attribution. If you’re the coach of a basketball team, do you want all the best shooters in your starting line-up, or the guys who have the most assists, or even the guys who get the most rebounds and play the best defense? The obvious answer is yes to all of these options.
People who lack good process typically abhor being held accountable, and want to be rewarded regardless of pre-conceived expectations and measurable results. For my money, it all boils down to process. Why? Because most of us understand the basic premise that it is difficult if not impossible to control the outcome or an intended result, and all you can control is the process, the practice or procedures that are in place.
A very wise (and wealthy man, I might add) once said to me eight years ago: If you can’t measure it, it’s not real. We could argue for hours whether he was referring to process or results, or both. Ironically, he was speaking about non-profits and how people give countless dollars away without any measurable results on which these charities can be evaluated. Yet it is deeper than this- what he was really referring to was positive results and its measurement as opposed to no result or a negative outcome. In addition, you can’t measure anything if there are no goals or objectives stated upfront, which is the way you measure something or someone in terms of accountability. Again, you can measure process as well, and it is my belief that without the correct process accompanying the results-oriented goals, you aren’t going to achieve much of anything.
So let’s take the student who has a goal of getting all A’s and B’s, and he has the intelligence to achieve these goals. If that’s all there is to his goal, he has a low percentage of achieving the desired result.
Why? In order to achieve these goals, the student has to show up for class, put in a certain amount of hours writing papers, studying for tests, spending time talking to teachers for outside help (if needed), and even understanding what it is going on (perhaps by taking practice tests) in order to master the material. In other words, Jill may be an excellent writer but a lousy test taker due to anxiety or other emotional issues; Jack may be a great test taker, but can’t write his way out of a paper bag. Assuming the grade is weighted more heavily towards papers or tests will determine how much effort Jill or Jack is going to have to put in so that they can get a minimum B as a grade. If Jack procrastinates on writing papers by play too many video games, and waits until the last minute (i.e., a flawed process given his strengths and weaknesses), he may not achieve his goal. Conversely, if Jill procrastinates studying for exams by watching too much TV or texting her friends, she may also experience the unintended result. Finally, if Jill puts more effort into writing her papers because she is naturally good at it, and does not spend more time preparing for exams because it causes anxiety and she believes that it doesn’t matter how much time she spends, she may not achieve her goal. Same for Jack yet the opposite is true.
The business analogy here is that if a CEO does not excel at making presentations in front of investors and the company’s # 1 priority is securing the necessary capital to succeed, then either the CEO has to be coached on how to be more effective in the meetings, or he is experiencing my definition of insanity- doing the same thing over and over again yet expecting a different outcome. In other words, if the CEO continues to make presentation after presentation with no help from other members of the management team who may be more effective and/or experienced in raising capital, then it does not matter how many credible investor meetings he has, the outcome just won’t matter.
In college sports, I witnessed truly gifted physical athletes who weren’t living up to their potential because they didn’t practice hard enough, or were undisciplined enough to get drunk or high before a game or match. Typically, they were outperformed by their counterpart who had a certain amount of natural ability, but worked hard and long in practice in order to be able to execute proficiently under pressure in a real game situation. Clearly, it was about controlling the process rather than the results. I’ve read stories about Larry Bird going out three hours before every game and shooting for an hour before his team mates showed up, or Michael Jordan lifting weights on game day, or even Novak Djokovic eliminating all gluten and sugar from his diet in order to achieve peak athletic performance (both mental and physical). He also worked incessantly on his second serve (his perceived weakness in 2010) to the point where he has the highest percentage of points won on his second serve in men’s tennis. These example are all about process, even though the result was to be the best player in the sport. Yes, you can measure sports by statistics and winning shots, but it is the process that is directly attributable to the results. Ultimately, it boils down to emotional intelligence and work ethic, as we all know you can ‘over train’ which in hindsight could be a less than optimal process.
From my 32+ years of work experience as both an employee and an entrepreneur, business is no different than school, being a professional athlete, an artist or writer. The main difference in business with respect to getting the desired results is in your ability (or lack thereof) to be able to work effectively with people from all sorts of backgrounds; focus and being realistic about how much time it is going to take to achieve something; daily practice of emotional intelligence in terms of honesty, integrity and transparency in all of your communications; understanding risk and doing everything in your power to mitigate those risks; having realistic expectations of yourself and others, and harnessing the experience (learning from ones’ mistakes- there are no failures) from past successes and disappointments in order to put in place the right processes.
Please don’t misunderstand- I’m not suggesting for a nanosecond that setting goals and putting in effort aren’t critical for success, no matter what the endeavor. From my vantage point, the bottom line is that if you process is not right, you can shoot an arrow farther or throw a pitch faster than the next person or even perform surgery in less time, but your are not necessarily going to hit the target or strike zone or save lives more frequently, which for all practical purposes are the intended results, assuming your goal has something to do with measurable success, winning or achieving something important to you. So let’s start giving out A’s for process and not for effort, because in the end that’s what success and achieving goals are all about.
