Uncommonly Invisible > Commonly Visible
1. Inclusion > Incentives
Most Companies believe that incentives drive behaviours and try to influence the desired outcomes through well-structured short term incentives. It is true that incentives have a disproportionate effect on people’s behaviour but it is not sustainable and sometimes destructive to long term value creation. In contrast, people feeling and believing included in discussions and decisions end up doing extra ordinary things and potentially drive long term value creation. Create an environment to get people truly included not just involved or informed.
2. Intention > Outcomes
We reward outcomes because it is measurable and visible. However, outcomes are result of numerous interdependent factors coming together. Intention is tied to the cause, bonds people on individual and collective motivation. Don’t ignore the incredible power of the invisible intention.
3. Outcomes > Outputs
This happens a lot when we engage partners. We design the engagement based on outputs (outcome-based contracts are fallacies). At the end of the engagement we get lot of outputs but not the right outcomes. To make matters worse, if you were unclear about the intention to begin with then achieving outcomes become very elusive.
4. Actions > Activities
Evaluate the progress by measuring the quantity and quality of actions an initiative can drive and deliver. We get side tracked by measuring the activities.
5. Principles > Promises
We often lose sight of our principles. They are implicit and we don’t let them guide our decision. More emphasis is given to the promises we make and promises we keep but keeping to set of principles should be valued more than keeping up promises. This is a tough one — let it digest you will understand.
6. Alignment > Agreement
Invest time to seek alignment towards a shared goal or a common cause which is more valuable than searching for agreements on the specifics of your implementation. By the time you achieve agreement with everyone, you may have diluted and delayed the implementation.
7. Preparation > Performance
Being prepared is far more valuable than performing inconsistently without preparation. The learning and shaping opportunity is in the preparation, getting yourself ready for the moment which may or may not result in best performance but your preparation doesn’t go for waste.
8. Unknowables > Unknowns
Not all unknowns are worth knowing but often companies set themselves on a quest to find the unknowns without having the clarity of value in knowing them. However, the deeper understanding of the unknowables could be a worthwhile journey. Knowing why they are unknowable could give you clue in to your current system. Deming has written a lot about it.
9. Mindset > Skillset
This is an obvious one. You can measure the skillset, you can help upgrade someone’s skillset but mindset is invisible and in fact can be deliberately made invisible. Companies need better system to assess and measure to identify the mindset and enable people to be transparent about them.
10. Learning > Growing
A beginner’s mind has endless possibilities and in expert’s mind the possibilities are limited. The visible growth such as promotions does curtail learning or willingness to learn. When you are weighing in opportunities that will let you grow internally vs grow externally, make your pick wisely.
