Are you measuring the right things?

In an outcome driven culture, we often measure ourselves based on the yardsticks of conventional success - whether if it is the amount of money we have in our bank, promotions, titles, or annual revenue of our company, etc. While it is important to have specific and tangible goals for ourselves and our organizations, these outcome-driven metrics are only part of the picture.

Here are some common traps that many of us can fall into if we are not careful:

1. We become too attached to the past: we often make the assumptions that what we have achieved in the past will always lead us to success in the future. This is simply not true. As we become more aware of who we want to be, what our aspirations are for our future, how we measure ourselves should also change. This is especially true in times of personal transitions and organization transformation.

2. We make attribution errors: Sometimes, we erroneously attribute our effort to the outcomes we see when in fact other factors are involved (i.e. “our financials are looking good this quarter therefore we must be doing something right”). Our circumstances contribute a lot to the outcomes we observe. Simply judging the merit of own efforts based on outcomes, we miss true understanding of what is going on.

3. We are drawn to risk adverseness/ fixed mindset: By attaching our success to these rigid outcomes, we become so risk adverse that we miss out on the opportunities to evolve and grow. It is like the invisible hand that keeps pulling us back when we are ready to make the change.

If we truly want to measure ourselves against how effectively our behaviors and actions are affecting the change we want to see / future we want to be part of, we need a new metric system that measures the progress towards the future we want to create rather than that of the past.

New metric system captures not only retrospective outcomes, but also emergent behaviors.

For example, an incumbent in the industry is struggling to shift towards a new emerging technological transformation. The strategy is quite clear, but it is struggling with execution. Why? Culture lags strategy. New operating models takes time to define and cascade and the progress is often stymied by measuring that against success from the past. In times of uncertainties, it is common behavior to grasp harder to what we know (from the past) and default to managing risks (against what we know) instead of relinquishing constrains that will free us up to the future we want to see. Tipping the culture towards a new future orientation by measuring and rewarding emerging behaviors as well as outcomes can be a true level for change.