Consistency vs Accuracy

One of the very first lessons of marksmanship I learnt at the National Defence Academy as an officer cadet of the Indian Army, was to understand the difference between consistency and accuracy of shots, and the importance of choosing one over the other on my path towards becoming a good marksman. While the concept was taught in the context of rifle shooting, I think it is so fundamental that it can be abstracted and applied in many areas of life.

Before I explain further, let us understand the concept first. If you look at the image below, At the beginning, most novice shooters find their shots in target similar to the representation in pattern D in the image. The shots are neither accurate, nor consistent. Basically, this is called ‘all over the place’.

But all of us intuitively know that to become a good marksman one has to get to pattern A - Accurate AND consistent. The question is, what is the most sustainable path from pattern D to pattern A. So basically, we have two paths:

• Choose accuracy over consistency (Pattern D->C->A): Get as many shots in the bullseye as possible without prejudice to the other shots scattered everywhere in the target. Overtime, get the scattered shots into the bullseye.
• Choose consistency over accuracy(Pattern D->B->A): Become consistent first ie hit all shots as a group (with group size of less than 5cm ie the distance between farthest shot from the centre of the group), without prejudice to the location of the shot group from the bullseye. Over time, correct your errors, and get the shot group into bullseye.

I learnt (rather was regimented) to choose option B ie Choose consistency over accuracy. Here is why:

• If we try to become more accurate before we became consistent (pattern C in image), it is very difficult to understand why the bullets are hitting randomly, and correct for errors. The first shot the shooter did well, but second he anticipated a recoil, third he did well, fourth he didn't correct for the wind, and so on. So the error patterns are not consistent, and it is difficult to diagnose the errors, and correct them.
• But when your shots in the group are consistent but the group itself is away from bullseye(pattern B in the image), it means that some specific error condition is causing that shift in group. See chart below for detailed error diagnosis. We can study the errors, and correct for them, one by one. Once the error is discovered, work on correcting it consistently. Once error is corrected, the shot group can be brought to the bullseye or closer to the bullseye (in which case shooter needs to correct another error). Note: This is probably an oversimplification because combinatorial errors can occur as well but I think you get the drift

With that background, let us see if we can apply this learning by analogy for two everyday examples:

Exercise & Workout regimen: Say, you decide to do exercise 1hr everyday with a goal to reduce weight by 10 kgs in 6 months.

• Accurate but not consistent (pattern C): In pursuit of your goal, lets say you are following the below regimen. Most of the time you are trying to hit your goal of 1h/day exercise so much so that even if a small thing comes in your way, you give up. If multiple errors happen - eg: you slept late AND you ate too much the previous night, you have very limited incentive to correct to achieve partial result because you are trying to hit the accuracy - 1h exercise everyday.  As a result, many days you do manage to hit the 1h mark and you fail many other days. More worrisome, there is no pattern, there is no habit. You did not choose a goal that you can consistently hit, perfect, and improve over time.

• Consistent but not accurate (pattern B): Rather, if we set even a simple goal - get up everyday at 6am and walk for 30mins, and once you master that habit, increase the length and intensity of exercise slowly over time, you are more likely to be successful. So we would have corrected for the error - of not getting up in the morning, and once that error is corrected, then you are consistently closer to the bullseye of doing exercise 1h a day.

Another analogy in product development, customer problem solving, and startups:

When your team is building a product to solve your customer problems, not everything you build on day 1 will solve every need of every type of your customers. In that situation, it is better to choose a small segment, solve a few problem consistently well, make your customers really happy, and then move to the next problem. If you try to get your customer UX right randomly for some use cases for all customers, then it is more than likely that everyone will be unhappy, and no one might stay. Ambition and vision apart, small iterative implementation is crucial.

So in this case, choosing consistency, essentially means, ruthlessly prioritising and establishing a set of baseline goals, and hitting those goals consistently. As you improve your product, you are essentially correcting the errors in specific customer UX/problems and doing it consistently well. You can always refine the goals, get additional resources and capabilities to solve larger problems (ie correct more errors), and get your solution to become more closer (accurate) to your final vision UX over time.

So, which do you believe is better and sustainable to achieve your goals - Consistency of results or Accuracy of results?

Image credits: Google Image Search (source links in images)