Leaders Lead, Laggers Lag
The reason a "result" is not a useful leadership tool is that it is "following" the action and based on the emotions.
The reason focus is on “lagging” indicators is akin to a bad joke in which a guy asks a fellow on his hands and knees looking for something about why he was doing it. The fellow responded and the guy quickly again asks naively, “where did you drop it” and the fellow answers “over there!”. The guy now confidently asks (since he thinks he’s solved the problem), “why on earth are you looking here then?” Whence the fellow of clearly equivalent intellect scornfully answers, “because the light is better over here.” The lagging indicators are easy to find and see.
What is the problem then?
A good result sends the heart soaring and a bad one breaks the heart and both affect effort levels with no practical means nor thought of balancing with focus. “A result is a motivation and never should be a focus yet often it is.” Claiming this misrepresentation is not "hocus pocus", and yet real science that can be proved easily time after time and in many different systems and scenarios. Results are in the realm of motivation, and the heart of emotions and specifically - effort. Properly balanced with a focus on the process at hand, effort is a key performance control that leaders use; a precursor of consequence as I’m fond of calling it.
An improperly focused effort to affect results by noting and applauding good results or scolding bad ones is a completely avoidable imbalance yet a widely accepted and prevalently repeated one.
Focus, likewise, is inherently flawed as a performance indicator or tool to lead since it is a function of the mind whereas intense focus is needed at times and it requires effort from the heart of emotion. Simply noting focus of the carpenter on the head of the nail is silly unless the balance with which the effort to "hold" the focus and draw back the hammer and strike is considered of primary importance.
Balanced focus and effort is the key to confidence.
Confidence inspires spirit that emanates knowledge of the fact that balancing focus on impact with the effort to deliver the "blow" is key and works to ensure the nail is driven in straight and quickly with no bent nails nor smashed thumbs. Proving this is no major task and the exact opposite of magic that utilizes distraction from concealed efforts as opposed to focused efforts. There are many physical examples of this in the world we live in high performance and malfunction due to misplaced focus.
· Focus with no effort is unmotivated.
· Effort with no focus is undisciplined.
· Undisciplined effort does not learn.
· Unmotivated focus does not aspire.
How can undisciplined effort learn since it is unaware of the cause of failure?
“Since its focus is on the result and NOT the cause, undisciplined efforts fail twice because they do not learn from mistakes.” Note a recent headline:
One reason that some people seem unable to learn from their mistakes has been pinpointed by scientists.
A spelling mistake in the DNA of a gene within the brain seems to impair the ability of a person to improve their performance based on knowledge of earlier errors.
The findings may also help explain why this same variant has previously been linked to addictive and compulsive behaviours, according to the German team that reports the discovery today.
When people inherit this variation of the gene, called A1, they make fewer docking points in the brain for a chemical called dopamine, one that carries messages between brain cells and plays a key role in movement, balance and in reward and pleasure circuits.
The discovery, reported in the journal Science, was made by Tilmann Klein, Dr Markus Ullsperger and colleagues of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany and Max-Planck-Institute for Neurological Research, Cologne, with colleagues at the universities of Bonn and Giessen.
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“A spelling mistake in the DNA of a gene within the brain”?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
1. “reward and pleasure circuits”,
2. “addictive and compulsive behaviours”?
3. Obsessed focus on results!
4. A widely professed “MBA style” performance control.
Focused efforts to affect precursors of consequence garner data our minds triangulate, and calibrate into precise trajectories on paths to successful results. Think of a cannon firing at certain trajectory say, “40 deg”. The focus is on the precursor or trajectory. The result calls for an altered trajectory - up or down. Undisciplined focus is akin to simply moving the cannon up or down without noting the precise angle (40 deg). As dumb as it seems, results based performance controls are akin to simply plotting where the projectile lands each time and proclaiming, "missed", "missed long", "missed long again", and perhaps then, "you're ranked last" and "you're fired". This is "the tail wagging the dog", at its worst.
"I have not failed. I've just found 10000 ways that won't work." - Thomas A. Edison
“Meanwhile we muddle along ‘spotting’ and ‘reporting’ mere ‘results’ as if we are anything except promoting a magic show of befuddled employees concealing incidents, and pulling numbers out of hats if someone ‘wants’ improved results beyond their discipline to achieve it correctly” Why not? Who gets “left holding” the bag of bad results and guess who (hint: imprudent insiders aka “bad managers”) “reaps” the bag of good. Its a low incident, high consequence, inexplicably complex, industry we work in and risk takers and gamblers alike can see the odds are on their side yet against the public that must except the most easily understood coherent and plausible story – “it was the guy left holding the bag that is responsible.”
Keeping people inspired to desire worthy goals, while effort fully focused on tasks before them within competent processes, is the key performance control leaders refer to ==== CONFIDENCE.