Pitfalls in chasing success

We've all read about "sustainable growth". Many Management Pundits have warned us (yes, on HBR too) quite often that chasing quarterly results exclusively could lead to unpleasant things.

Chasing a metric is quite tempting. Choosing a metric to chase is far more difficult. Often, we choose and chase only those metrics that are easy to measure / understand.

This afflicts nearly everyone. Project Managers, Consultants, Sales Persons, CEOs, Governments, Non-Profits, ... the list goes on.

How many new customers? How many sales dollars?

How many Conference Speaker assignments? How many followers?

How many members? What funds collected so far?

The problem is that they actually look like the right metrics to chase. May be they are, for some.

It might be worthwhile to step back and ask: "What exactly are we trying to achieve?" and resist answering in the same terms as the metrics above. Validate that answer. Then chase that vision or goal... not the metrics.

Let the metrics be an indicator of how you are progressing towards the goal. Not become the goal by themselves.

I should perhaps give some examples. But I wonder whether "being clear" is what I want to do. Perhaps I should just let you find your path.

Innovation is dangerous

Yes, innovation is sexy, but only after it succeeds and gains some popularity.

Until then it is not just hard, it can be downright dangerous to your morale.

It is easy to mistake innovation to be merely coming up with a new idea, new design or a new way of doing something. Yes it is the starting point, but for it to succeed, the idea/design should be implemented and shown to be delivering the promised results. Often, it is a proposition fraught with unforeseen complexities and stiff resistance that tests your mettle.

Surely there are design and implementation complexities to be overcome. The bigger the problem you are trying to solve, the longer it takes (usually) and the harder you've to work.

Then there are the status-quo-ists and doubting thomases aplenty. They question your ability to deliver and the veracity of the idea. Why not simply let things be? Where is the need to change? How do we know that the result will be better?  If all else fails they can always fall back on this popular argument (familiar to UID proponents & opponents as well):

"Has any one else in the world done it before? If it were such a good idea, obviously someone else would've done it. It wasn't. Ergo, it is a bad idea!"

The situation is indeed loaded in favour of the critics. Predictions of doom and gloom are often self-fulfilling. They demotivate the innovators, erect barriers through misguided followers and in general make the innovators' life tougher than it already is. Either the innovators give up; or redirect energy from solving problems to countering the critics. Either way the critics win often enough - for the environment to foster more critics than innovators.

Tough as it is, when you do reach the goal, the rewards are most satisfying. This applies to entrepreneurship too. The similarities are many, though the two are not entirely the same.

The question for the innovators therefore is:

Do you have sufficient self-belief, resolve and inner-strength to persist against all odds and reach the exalted state of success and sexiness?

Then there is a challenge for all us:

How can we turn the environment around, build a culture that forgives failures and encourages the innovators and positivists during their work -- not just after?

No doubt, there is a need for checks and balances. Just that it is far too skewed against our good at this time. It is time we restored a semblance of balance in favour of progress.