When you are in any management or leadership position, you often focus on very specific outcomes. Much of our effort and energy goes into achieving results that are measured against particular goals, like sales numbers, budget, turnover. These results indicate whether you have passed or failed at achieving the goals. This performance approach involves a lot of judgement (“we failed / we lost / we are not good enough”), and often it impacts our self-esteem. The frustrating element is that we cannot really control the outcome. What we CAN control, however, is the process.
That is why I suggest with clients to take a different approach when setting goals and measuring results; Imagine VIEWING GOALS AS PART OF A LARGER IMPROVEMENT PROCESS. This process is a combination of planning, taking action, evaluating and adjusting (if necessary). Then not only the result counts, but every step in our improvement process is valuable. More importantly, these steps are much better manageable than the final outcome.
Let’s look at sports: many athletes have the ultimate goal of “winning a golden medal in the Olympics”. That’s their goal. But there’s a 4-year run up to the Olympics, so they set smaller goals for themselves; If the athlete is a swimmer, they want to work to get off the starting block faster, make their turns smoother, get tens of seconds off their lap time, make sure they have the right equipment. These are all small steps THEY HAVE CONTROL over and that motivate them to keep going. They have no control over the outcome during the Olympics; what the conditions in the pool will be, how fit their competition is, anything can happen - these are all external circumstances they cannot influence. Yet they achieve results by getting stronger, fitter and faster by improving and optimizing their process.
Having a process-oriented strategy is not about letting go of your actual goals or results but using them as an ASSESSMENT MECHANISM of the larger improvement process. This strategy focusses on increasing your competence, your understanding and your long-term success. Results are only used for feedback or guidance.
This change in your mentality ensures that ALL OUTCOMES LEAD to LEARNING, GROWTH and IMPROVEMENT.
Let’s Lead!
