The elusive space between effort and result

A few years ago, I was struggling to come to terms with my professional life and the state of affairs surrounding it. I aspired for a mid-career change and every now and then I would come up with a new idea or a novel approach to move forward. Pleased with myself I would venture off to test this out in the world. Almost always, I would get a pushback from the people I spoke to. Messages would range from lukewarm responses like “you may not really be cut out for this”, “you may not have relevant experience”, “there are so many others doing this better already” to downright “this won’t work” or “you do not have a chance at this and better stick to what you are doing".

After a point, I became terribly frustrated and I went to my coach to vent. As I described my predicament, I found myself drawing an analogy of a maze. This is how I described it: "a path appears, I get excited to see this window of hope emerging, I go down that path only to discover that it is a dead end and find myself retracing my steps back to the center of the maze. This pattern consistently repeats itself. What do I do? I am so angry, anxious and frustrated. I seem to keep coming back to the same place without any tangible movement towards my goal."

She looked at me. There was a brief silence. She did not proceed to give me advice or narrate her own personal experience with this sort of crisis. All she said after a pause was this.

“Anand, are you really coming back to the same place?”

There was no need for her to say anything else. Her question jolted me and I had my light-bulb moment.

No, I was certainly not coming back to the same place. Every time a door closed a new awareness emerged on what worked and what did not work. I came back to the center a lot more enlightened than before.

I learnt the following key lessons from this 'maze' conversation.

You are always sowing seeds: You may not see the results immediately but a foundation is being laid. After a certain passage of time the results will appear from the most unpredictable quarters.

You may have heard the story of the Chinese bamboo tree. Once you plant it, nurture it and fertilise it nothing happens. You keep persisting with the nurturing and fertilising every year and still nothing emerges. This happens for 4 years in a row. At some point you find yourself losing hope as you are seeing no evidence of results. But for those who labour on, the Chinese bamboo tree sprouts in the 5th year. In just 5 weeks it grows up to 90 feet in the 5th year. All the action was happening underground – you just could not see it. That is the power of foundation.

This is also true for some of the roles that we take up in organisations involving change and transformation. The distance between efforts and rewards and the resultant invisible quality can frustrate us. But laying a foundation takes time and respecting this is not to live in futile hope but acknowledging its potent truth. Foundation is doing it right once, it is about creating strong roots in values, authenticity, strategy, culture and capabilities. The rest will follow. Tampering with this foundation in order to create short term results will be counter-productive and failure will be imminent.

We undermine efforts and overemphasise results: We are so outcome focussed and we are ready to throw the baby with the bathwater if we do not meet specific result criteria. It is possible that efforts (in isolation) can create different pathways and possibilities. We need to stop, pause and reflect on the awareness emerging from the journey of effort. Perhaps, it is time to revisit the destination in light of this new information. It is ok to change course and it is not a symbolic black mark on our report card of competence and achievements.

Years ago, I found a colleague working day and night for an upcoming audit. The audit day finally arrived and he managed to breeze through it successfully. As we were celebrating over dinner that night, I remarked in a lighter vein that his entire cumulative effort had been in futility as none of the questions or issues that he had prepared for had come up on D-day. He shook his head and replied "The effort dealt me the necessary confidence. Without the effort I would not have been able to face them as I did."

In the end, effort was all that mattered. Effort acting in isolation was the catalyst for desired outcome.

We underestimate the learning process. Our ability to navigate our life journey effectively depends on our openness to learn. When framed in a learning context there are no winners and losers and no fixed point of success and failure.

Let us examine the parallels in careers and organisations.

Organisations that are focussed excessively on short term results tend to reward outcomes and do not challenge how they are met. They justify the end over means. They do not make time to nurture and invest in resources (especially people). There is a difference between extensive dashboards (carrying a list of people initiatives) that are prepared to justify one’s job and a real investment (the true test of this investment is time and not money) that is embedded in day-to-day behaviours and culture.

Organisations that work on strengthening foundations rather than focus on quick fixes are not so enthusiastic in finding/labelling scapegoats and apportioning blame. Instead they are more than willing to go back to the drawing board and do what is really needed. They reward real efforts (diligence/capability) and consequently come face to face with a rediscovered meaning of high potentials. They reward learning, which helps them see failure in a larger context and develop resilience. Resilience is not a buzzword here but an embodiment of the character of this workplace.  

Personally, I learnt an important lesson that day. Our roots (strength of character, sincerity), efforts (hard work, diligence) and our learning (adaptability, openness) operate in a not so finite continuum. They are constantly influencing and interacting with each other dynamically. They lend shape and form to the life and career we want to build and maintain. The setbacks that we encounter are an essential precondition to our personal growth.

Pain and struggle are the currency of this growth and effort is the oxygen.

So, the next time you hit a road block or a dead end, know that they are not ‘in’ your way but rather ‘on’ your way.