Are You About The Outcome Or The Process?

Photo by Clayton Robbins on Unsplash

From early on, we’re taught to be “good” at our work which typically translates to developing strong, technical expertise. 

We’re required to learn the right processes, the tools to be deployed and the results to be achieved as a result of following that process.

If we do this well, we’re hailed as ‘process experts’ which, generally speaking, is a good thing. Process experts help us accelerate our delivery, because they know what to do and they do so efficiently and effectively, over and over again.

But when there is unplanned change - a shift in our business environment, a competitive change, or a disruption in our ecosystem - ‘process’ can become a drag on the system. 

Because, in those situations, order and efficiency is not the need of the hour. What’s needed then is agility, speed and flexibility, to get us to the desired result. Adhering to the process tends to slow us down.

So it’s important in those instances to ask ourselves: Are we about the outcome or the process? 

Now, that seems like an obvious question with an obvious answer, but I think we’d be surprised at the behaviors we actually exhibit. 

Often, we’re so immersed in our process, so beholden to not disrupting the normal flow of things, with its normal ‘checks and balances’ (especially in large corporations) that our natural tendency towards risk aversion takes over. 

To subvert the process, so to speak, requires a level of courage. It requires us to break with policy and upend the system, in the name of getting to the answer more quickly, to respond to the situation. That’s hard to do, especially when we’ve been taught to follow protocols, observe rules and not usurp the status quo. It’s typically not “in us” to go against the grain in this way.

What’s more, if our subversion doesn’t yield the desired result (it is a risk after all), who takes the blame? We were the ones who took the chance and made the decision, after all. The finger is pointed squarely at ourselves. Hence, the tendency towards risk aversion.

The question to ask ourselves in these instances is: what matters? What gives us the best chance to get to the best outcome? And will the system we have press all the right buttons to get us to the right result? 

The answers are individual, of course. But I do know that they demand something in ourselves: an orientation towards something more than “activity” and towards “end product”, a belief in something more than busywork towards tangible outcomes (as our prime responsibility). 

I also know that the ability for us to take on such behaviors requires an environment that is understanding and supportive of such actions and risks. 

But assuming that’s there, then, it’s just down to us.

(One side note: it’s tempting to think that these sorts of questions only need to be asked when crises occur - a pandemic, a natural disaster, etc. But they’re as applicable when we consider the evolving nature of many functions within our organizations. As process-driven activities are automated and outsourced, we need to ask ourselves if what we’re doing is subject to those changes or disruptions. If so, this question is equally as valid. What are we about? Executing the process or getting to the right outcomes? The answers may not always be as comfortable as we’d like.)