Why Working Harder Isn’t Working. (#293)
The Confident Leader
BOOST YOUR LEADERSHIP IN UNCERTAIN TIMES
“We gotta do more.”
But what if more isn’t the solution?
“What you do has far greater impact than how much you do it.”
— Stephen Covey
This Week’s Edition
Results come from two variables: Activity × Effectiveness
Clarify Your Thinking
Here’s the pattern I see time and time again:
A team misses targets.
Leadership responds: “We need to push harder.”
Leadership doesn’t say the quiet part out loud:
“I bet people aren’t working as hard as they need to. My job is to hold them accountable to work harder.”
So the team ramps up it’s effort.
But the results barely move.
The cycle continues.
Why?
Apart from effort, if your effectiveness is low, more activity just creates more inefficiency, pushing you further away from the results you want.
This is a classic case of leaders confusing activity (how hard people are working) with productivity (the results everyone wants).
- High activity + low effectiveness = burnout
- Low activity + high effectiveness = inconsistency
- High activity + high effectiveness = results
A McKinsey study found that organizations with healthier, more effective teams significantly outperform others in both performance and long-term results.
The mistake isn’t pushing for more activity per se.
It’s not diagnosing where the breakdown actually is.
This is the sticking point for most leaders.
Old Thinking:
If we just increase the volume, the results will come.
New Thinking:
Activity multiplies effectiveness. If effectiveness is off, more activity won’t fix it. It will expose it.
Thoughts Lead to Actions
When results aren’t where you want them, seek to diagnose.
Your job is not solely to manage effort, it’s to lead a system.
And every system has two levers: activity and effectiveness.
Here’s how to figure out which one needs your attention:
Start with the Equation.
Are we doing this work? If not, we need to increase our activity.
Are we being effective at work? If not, we need to skill up to improve our effectiveness.
This simple formula helps leaders not fall into the trap of thinking effort is the only lever.
While tempting to push harder, failure to generate results requires leaders to pause to determine if the system needs adjustment.
Boost Your Performance
In this week’s video, I break down how one team doubled their results—not by increasing activity, but by improving effectiveness at one key stage of their process.
What’s Your Opinion?
When results drop, do you tend to push activity or evaluate effectiveness first? Send me your thoughts: robin.pou@robinpou.com.
If you are going to be a leader, you might as well be a good one. Don’t let doubt count you out. Have a confident week!
Robin Pou, Chief Advisor and Strategist
We live to make bad leadership extinct so forward this newsletter to others who strive to be confident leaders.
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What is “The Confident Leader”?
During the Covid-19 Pandemic, I began a video series called “Panic or Plan?” It was designed to equip leaders to navigate the doubt they experienced and to rise in the confidence they needed to lead during turbulent times. It took off. I then started this newsletter to equip leaders in the same fashion each week for the doubt that crashes across the bow of their leaderSHIP.
