Before the Results Arrive
Have you ever felt pressured to deliver immediate results while trying to build the foundation for lasting excellence?
Leaders are expected to produce results. Boards, customers, employees, and stakeholders rarely have unlimited patience. They want evidence that the plan is working, and they usually want it now.
That expectation is understandable. Yet some of a leader’s most important work does not deliver immediate results.
Establishing standards, developing people, changing habits, and building a healthy culture all take time. Progress may be occurring long before it appears on the scoreboard.
Walsh was not suggesting that results were unimportant. He believed that leaders should concentrate on establishing and consistently executing the standards that eventually produce those results. The scoreboard is important, but it is also a lagging indicator. It tells us what has already happened—not necessarily what is currently being built.
John Wooden became synonymous with sustained excellence at UCLA. His teams eventually won ten national championships in twelve seasons, a run that may never be duplicated. What we sometimes forget is that Wooden coached at UCLA for fifteen seasons without winning a national championship. His first title did not arrive until his sixteenth season.
Imagine evaluating his potential based only on those first fifteen years.
Mike Krzyzewski faced an even more immediate challenge at Duke. After a winning first season, his teams posted consecutive losing records. Alumni and boosters reportedly pressured athletic director Tom Butters to replace him. Butters resisted that pressure because he believed in the coach and the program Krzyzewski was building.
That patience was rewarded. Coach K remained at Duke for forty-two seasons, won five national championships, and retired as the winningest coach in Division I men’s college basketball history.
Neither UCLA nor Duke ignored results indefinitely. They looked beyond the record and considered what was happening underneath it. They saw capable leaders establishing standards, recruiting and developing people, and creating cultures that could support lasting success.
Patience is not permission to ignore failure. It is the discipline to look beyond today’s results and determine whether the right work is producing meaningful progress.
Are people developing? Are standards becoming clearer? Are behaviors changing? Is the organization moving closer to the desired outcome, even if the final results have not yet appeared?
There is a difference between a plan that is failing and a sound plan that has not yet had sufficient time to succeed. Great leaders develop the judgment to recognize that difference— and the patience to continue building when the evidence says they are moving in the right direction.
Under pressure, it is tempting to change direction simply to demonstrate that we are doing something. But abandoning the right work too early can be just as damaging as remaining committed to the wrong work for too long.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Where are you feeling pressure to produce immediate results?
What evidence might tell you that progress is occurring even though the scoreboard hasnot yet changed?
CHALLENGE
Have the patience to examine what is being built beneath the surface. If the foundation is sound and the right work is being done, remain accountable, keep improving—and give excellence the time it needs to emerge.
