Ask Tough Questions When Goals Are Met, Not Just When They’re Missed

After Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia, the Nokia chairman famously said: “We didn’t do anything wrong. Somehow we just lost.” There were tons of articles, each expressing an opinion as to why it happened. Top reasons cited went from the technical — abandoning its own platform and switching to the Windows Phone — to more general corporate pitfalls — resting on its laurels, arrogance, failing to appreciate the disruptive power of new entrants, not taking care of their customers, and so on.

Most of the people writing these articles don’t really know the inside story of Nokia, and neither do I. But we do know that at one time, Nokia was on top. Presumably someone in that company was reporting they were hitting their goals — and then they weren’t.

There’s a powerful lesson here for every company:

Use the same rigor in inquiring about the reasons behind successes as you would about failures.

I’m talking about going behind the dashboard.

Like most things that go awry, it starts with good intentions: A company and the people who work there want to be evaluated fairly – on results. That gets translated to squeeze out subjectivity and base results (and compensation!) instead on a finite list of objective criteria: the dashboard.

But for some reason, we ask questions only when goals on the dashboard are missed: What happened? Why didn’t you achieve your objective? What went wrong?

We tend not to inquire too deeply into the underlying reasons when things are going well.

That’s too bad, because today’s decisions can’t be evaluated solely on short term results. Every decision has both short and long-term consequences and sets in motion a host of events that will play out over time. And, if those decisions are honestly and forthrightly examined, we might find some clues about the pitfalls we’ve inadvertently placed in the road ahead and around the bend.

So, when a team meets its objectives, we should be equally rigorous in demanding to know the reasons why.

Any complete report of results toward goals and objectives should include answers to the following questions:

1. What led you to pick these as worthy goals? Are there others you wish you had picked?
2. What are the 3 biggest challenges — internal and external — that arose during your progress toward the goal?
3. How did you resolve them, and why did you make those decisions?
4. What alternatives were considered and foregone and why?
5. What if any consequences — positive and negative — can you foresee from those decisions?
6. What can be done to maximize opportunities arising from these decisions and to minimize potential negative fallout?

It’s ok to have a dashboard with goals and objectives and to measure your progress and results. But it’s critical to avoid getting so caught up in claiming credit for “meeting objectives” that we forget to examine the longer-term implications of the decisions behind the results.