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Objective Reality

Written by: Dave Mather

Article Overview: If you want to create results that are truly important to you, it is critical to separate your identity (who you are) from the results you want. Feeling good or bad about yourself has little bearing on the quantity or quality of your results. If you doubt this, consider famous people with extreme self-doubts or poor self-concepts who produced spectacular results. The results of standardized tests indicate that students who "felt good about themselves" often performed lower than the scores they predicted they would achieve.

Objective Reality

Substituting "spin" for reality is a dangerous and costly game. Reality is an acquired taste. We know this by observing the human tendency of adding subjective interpretation (spin) to reality and relating to a concept of reality thereby distancing ourselves from the truth.

For example, in planning and executing our business strategies, relating to sales going up, down or
staying the same is a more objective and useful viewpoint than "current sales are good or bad." We are ahead or behind on our targets - that's it.
Determining if competition is getting stronger, weaker, or staying the same is more objective than a kneejerk reaction to their impact on our results.
Objectivity is far from being uncaring or unfeeling. Professionals are rarely dispassionate about what they do. Their objective relationship to their performance separates them from even the most motivated amateur. Amateurs tend to perform well only when inspired to do so.
Objectivity requires separating ourselves from our desired outcomes. In fact, we are already separate from them even if we act as if "they" are us.

In the arts, a painter is not his or her painting and the painting is not them. It is important for the artist to have an objective relationship to their art. If they take feedback too personally, their progress will be painfully slow.

In business, we have a vision, or picture, of our desired end result. If our identity is mixed up in that picture we will default to a reactive-responsive mode. This shifts the power from us to outside influence. We switch from creating the results we want to trying to make our plans work. This is a subtle, but incredibly important distinction. Staying focused on our desired outcomes leaves us free to quickly and objectively change our actions. We are free to change our mind without an identity crisis. On the other hand, trying to make our plans work creates a myopic viewpoint and ego raises its ugly head justifying the validity of our plans. This is similar to an artist mixing various colors together until the end result is a murky grey.

Keeping a picture of our desired end result in front of everyone in contrast to current reality clarifies what actions are required. Each action is analogous to putting paint to canvas. Over-analysis is deadly at this point. Actions, not intentions produce results.

In response to a patient's contention that "Time changes everything," the fictional Dr. Gregory House replied, "It's not true! Doing things changes things; not doing things leaves things exactly as they were."

It's telling that MBA students learn about competitive strategy, marketing strategy, financial strategy etc. but there are few, if any courses that focus on executing strategies. Working owners, managers and executives often know much more about planning that they do about actually achieving desired results.

"Empowering" everyone rarely focuses people in the right direction. It's management's responsibility to keep everyone moving forward doing what matters most.
During each action phase observe your "creation." Did the action move you closer to what you
envisioned? If so, add more "paint" (take action) or, cover the old paint with new to change the look (take action). Artists are not as conceptual or "out of touch with reality" as most people contend. Artists create artifacts - tangible expressions of their vision. Others may like their painting - or not. Someone may be willing to buy it - or not. However, turning a vision into reality is the work of an artist.

Most businesspeople cannot convert a vision into specific actions when they are so
focused on details, their mental-models, or their feelings that they fail to articulate
a compelling view of where the business or department is going and, in contrast, a
clear factual comparison to current reality.

Advance at the new speed of business by constantly engaging people in a clear view of what you are
creating by taking time with people to set and clearly communicate high performance goals on behalf of penetratingly clear strategies.

Resist the temptation of focusing on how good or bad things are (spin). Follow through on goal setting conversations by asking people to email what they heard from you. Even if this seems to be a waste of time, do it anyway. Often you'll walk away thinking critical actions are clear and discover later that they are not. Reading other's written response to your directions creates a feedback loop that saves time and potential rework.

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Article Tags: achievement, management, success



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