The Process

Trust the process.

We hear this preached to us all. the. time. So much so we’ve made it the unofficial motto of the blog (and not in an ironic Philadelphia 76ers tip-of-the-cap way). But following this advice is one of the hardest things to do. In this post, I’m going to detail some of the practical considerations, philosophies, and advantages of following a process mindset.

There’s a false dichotomy floating around out there that says you’re either results-oriented or process-oriented. Business leaders of yesteryear seemed to be all about results. It’s the end of the year now and this is the time most employees are submitting their results and accomplishments to be evaluated for raises and bonuses. I’ll be vulnerable here and say that as a member of corporate employment, I find articulating my results over the past year, well…underwhelming. It’s not that I don’t produce, but the reality is in a capitalist economy the value added per employee is so diluted (proportional to the size of the company) and success so broadly shared that evaluating “individual results” (whatever that means) is an exercise in vanity.

Of course results matter. But results are backward looking by definition and there aren’t any entitlements given for past results. In fact, companies with leading HR departments aren’t bothering with traditional year-end employee evaluations anymore. Instead, they’re evaluations emphasize improvement and growth. In other words, they’re orienting towards rewarding a process mindset. The reasons for this are many but I’ll provide one real example of why this is better. Every year, companies engage in a formal planning session that defines their annual operating plan, or AOP. From here executives cascade priorities down to their teams and managers define unit-level objectives that tie the overarching strategy down to project-specific tactics. In theory, this works well. In practice, not so much—it’s extraordinary if the business or management objectives haven’t shifted over the course of the year in such a way that renders the employee’s starting objectives moot.

So how is an employee supposed to be judged when the environment is rarely unchanged, not to mention all that’s out of the employee’s control? “Well this project was a key deliverable for the first three months but then management decided to pivot in a new direction.” Modern businesses must be agile and dynamic. By emphasizing and evaluating one’s process, the manager now has a leading indicator from which she can dole out incentives and ensure her team has a process that is the right fit.

Here’s another sports-related example. Say you’re the owner of a professional sports team. Would you rather have a general manager signing contracts for players at the peak of their (past) productive output or for those players that show signs of being great in the future? Note that players with a demonstrated track record are likely to command a premium relative to the latter. Today’s best front office general managers sign players who show future potential, sometimes jettisoning established stars in return for the potential of raw prospects. No World Series has been won on the back of a trading card.

By rewarding process, managers are shaping the future of their endeavor. It says to your shareholders, stakeholders, employees, and yourself, “we’re not done yet”.

If we stay in process, within ourselves, in the joy of the doing, we will never choke at the finish line. Why? Because we aren’t thinking of the finish line, we’re not looking at the clock, we’re not watching ourselves on the Jumbotron performing the very act we are in the middle of. No, we’re in process, the approach is the destination…and we are never finished…

When we do this, the race is never over. The journey has no port. The adventure never ends because we are always on our way. 

- Matthew McConaughey

So what does it mean to follow the process? I take it to mean a commitment to your guiding principles and a relentless pursuit of continuous improvement. You gotta dance with the lady that brought ya but what works this year, may not work the next. Whenever I invoke the “trust the process” motto, it’s mostly a reminder to stay true to our guiding principles and avoid mid-season, hasty algorithm “recalibrations” that would otherwise cloud judgment.

In closing, without a doubt results matter. Yet, we cannot rest on our laurels; the race is never over. Therefore, having a process orientation advantages companies and players alike by simultaneously grounding judgment in universal principles while looking forward towards continuous improvement.