You Need To Keep Score #218
I love football and use sports as a metaphor for team performance all the time. At this time of year, most leadership teams are reconciling how 2019 has gone and either celebrating or justifying the results (or lack thereof) they have.
I traveled to Denver the day after the Vikings played the Broncos. It was a terrific opportunity to talk about how effort does not equate to results at the workshop I was leading.
In case you didn’t see the game, the Vikings were playing terribly, and the Broncos were winning 20-0 at the half. The experts flashed a statistic that said 0 of 99 teams have won with that score at the half. Well, the Vikings beat the odds. They returned and won the game 27-23.
Now if you asked the Vikings and the Broncos who won the game and there was no scoreboard, both teams would talk about how hard they worked, the things that worked and didn’t and that for ½ the game, they clearly had the upper hand. They’d justify what happened with their effort but wouldn’t have a definitive way of knowing they’d won without a scoreboard.
It’s the same in business and life, you have nothing to justify when you hit the numbers and attain your goals. Ignoring a scorecard or goals, you can justify all the work you put into things, but if the result isn’t there, it isn’t there. Effort does not equal results.