Chase Process, Not Performance

There’s always a shiny thing people are after. It always makes complete sense (with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight). “It was Sooooo obvious, how did we NOT see it coming?” Our natural instinct is to give chase.

The problem with the instinct is it’s a shortcut. It’s mistaking the results for how the decision was made. A better question is, “What was the process that would have produced the decision to get us in front of it? And, would we actually have followed through in real-time?”

When we put process in front of performance we put ourselves in front of the only thing we can control. We’re crunching numbers, asking philosophical questions, and saying things like, “This is a really great framework,” or “yeah, no chance – this result would have been dumb luck.”

We can spend our time daydreaming about performance and the results that might have been, or we can spend our time focusing on a process to achieve the results we want.

Our efforts belong on the aspects we can control. Chase process, not performance.