I usually talk about using metrics to execute strategy. They are also useful to help you develop strategy and are part of the whole Lean Start-up methodology. I have included a video on the subject for your edification and enjoyment. It is a bit long at just under an hour but worth the perspective if you are in any way doing any strategic planning.
Otherwise known as “what got you here won’t get you there” is something interesting to ponder. I think it is taken as given that you have to fail in order to succeed. I’m not sure if anyone will argue with that one.
But I’ve been pondering whether success will inevitably end in failure.
Certainly if you look at companies, this is true. Few of the leading firms from a century ago or in fact even 30 years ago are still around and dominant the way they once were. They were victims of their own success, failing because their industry failed or they couldn’t innovate fast enough.
The same can be said of products that were once successful, industries that flourished, even countries that were successful inevitably fail.
Perhaps it is not completely true of people. If you believe the Peter Principle, employees will inevitably be promoted one level beyond their own level of competence and then fail.
There are a very few people though who rise to the top and then retire. They haven’t failed but then they did quit at the top. Products, companies, industries, and countries can’t quit so they all will inevitably fail.
I think the reason that success leads to failure is that people are unwilling to wake up every day thinking that everything they know could be wrong. If you are convinced that you couldn’t be wrong in some way then that is an area in which you are willing to learn.
If you’re unwilling to learn then you won’t progress and this then will lead to failure. The more successful people become, the more they think they know and thus the more they are unwilling to learn and the more likely they will be to fail.
So the happy thought for the weekend for all you successful people out there is: enjoy it now because your own success may be your eventual downfall.
While I’m asking question about success, I guess it is fair to ask questions about failure. It actually may be easier to define success than failure and to know when you’re there.
If failure is seen as not achieving success then anything other than perfection can be seen as failure. Let’s go back to school for this one. If you get 100 on a course then I think it is safe to say that you’ve succeeded. But have you succeeded if you only get an 80%, or a 60%, or a 50%?
Failure is set at below 50% but then 50% is successful. So I guess failure is as much of a value judgement as success is.
This is why defining success is so important in the workplace. An overachiever will bust her gut to get something perfect and think anything less is failure when “just good enough” is really what you wanted.
On the other hand, a slacker will put no effort in and not even reach “just good enough” and think he has nailed it.
Inevitably the overachiever will burn out and leave feeling they can never do enough and all you’ll be left with is slackers.
And then you’ll really know what failure looks like.
The Olympics were a great chance to watch others succeed (and fail.) If you’re an Olympic athlete, success may be doing the best you can in an event, getting a personal best. But how will an Olympic athlete know that they are there, that they have succeeded?
You see, it isn’t an easy thing to answer, even with something as straightforward as the Olympics.
Many people at work have no idea what success looks like and those who know what it looks like often have trouble knowing when they’re there.
Imagine playing golf all year, multiple rounds, and never knowing how you’ve done. Or knowing how you’ve done at the end of the year but not knowing what par was or how everyone else has done.
That’s what it’s like for many employees in many companies. It is not enough that you know what success looks like. You better be able to measure it so you know you’re there.
I was chatting with a new acquaintance last week about her job and I asked her a simple question that I now ask almost everyone I talk to. “What does success look like.”
The sad part is that she was unable to answer the question. It’s the same question I asked two other people that week and their reactions were all the same. A bit sheepish, a bit rueful. They all really wanted to know and were a bit sad and embarrassed that they didn’t.
If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. And that’s what is happening. When companies and people can’t define what success looks like, any bit of random activity and busy work can substitute for success.
So ask yourself the question: What does success look like for you?
If you read yesterday’s blog, you may have noticed that I used LinkedIn to figure out how many people in my network were interested in Strategic Planning versus Strategy Execution. In doing that little piece of analysis I think I may have stumbled onto an interesting way to figure out: Does anyone care what you have to say?
In addition to those word, I searched on a whole bunch of other words. What I found was that virtually no one cares about the things I talk about. Terms like Evidence Based Management (1,149 hits), Metrics Based Management (329 hits) and Operational Effectiveness (31,248 hits) are terms that I’ve used that virtually no one else uses. (In addition to Strategy Execution.)
You can compare those results with other terms such as Training (13,678,108 hits), Leadership Development (1,991,253 hits) or Management Training (536,978 hits.)
Another indicator of interests is in the term Management which gets 50,378,655 hits versus Leadership which gets 13,244,224.
This does go back to leadership. If you want to be an effective leader, you have to have a tribe of people who care about something as much as you do. LinkedIn is a good way of figuring out how big your tribe is. Maybe this is why Seth Godin has such a big tribe as Marketing gets 21,290,982 hits.
You also have to use the same language as other people do. It’s no use talking about Social Impact (28,184 hits) if no one else uses the term and thus won’t know what you’re talking about.
Thus it’s back to the drawing board for me. I must start using the same language as everyone else or no one will be listening. (Except you of course.)