As I stare into the jaws of the most troubling business cycle of our lifetime, I am both optimistic and troubled. I am optimistic that our innovation, perseverance and hard work will see us through, and troubled because situations like this magnify both our strengths and our shortcomings.

We are told that we are faced with a tremendous crisis. A crisis of the worst sort: systemic and broad-based with a pressing need for immediate action. And I am immediately reminded that crisis is always a double edged sword – risk and reward, opportunity and danger, the best and the worst. While it ‘cuts both ways,’ it is up to us to manage the speed, direction and arc of the swing. And that is the challenge.

Step back to a concept that I often share in the classroom: we (Americans) live in a ‘take action’ culture, a culture of the ‘protestant work ethic’ where incremental effort and pressing the nose harder to ‘the grindstone’ supposedly leads to success and rewards. We are also a culture of immediate gratification the ‘I-want-it-now-quick-fix-diet-pill-plastic-surgery-100% LTV loan’ society.

Don’t get me wrong, those traits are to be admired when put to good purpose. They have made us the innovative, industrious, ‘can do’ leader of the modern world. But they can often (as in a crisis), work against us.

Here is the inevitable confusion: because some hard work and immediate action (activity) might lead to desired results does not mean that ANY or MORE activity will increase the positive results. Too often the reality is that MORE IS NOT NECESSARILY BETTER. Thus we find ourselves stuck in the same old ‘stinkin’ thinkin’:

1. Why only put in 40 hours a week at my job – wouldn’t 50 or even 60 get me farther?
2. If we accomplished so much understanding in ONE meeting, wouldn’t TEN be better?
3. If a sale can be made for every 10 calls on average, wouldn’t 100 be better?
And so on…

At first blush, this seems sensible. But from a performance perspective it is lunacy. There are three fundamental truths to performance in the workplace:

1. It is the OUTCOME of the activity that matters.
2. What people DO is only important as it relates to what they PROCUCE
3. You only get what you measure

Combine these three truths and you understand my point. If we focus on activity, if we measure activity, if we create the mentality that more activity is better, then what do we get? MORE ACTIVITY. Fortunately, some of that activity will drive results for us. Unfortunately, much of it will only inflict cost on our organization.

In the end, the difference between good and great organizations rests on eliminating wasted motion by focusing activity on producing valuable outcomes then measuring those outcomes. If we measure time on the job, we get time, if we measure number of calls we get calls.

Back to the situation today. Do we REALLY need more activity, or do we need a measured approach where the only activity we undertake if clearly targeted toward producing a well defined outcome? Sometimes in business our personal lives and our nation, we would do well to pause. Perhaps our principle motto for times of crisis should be, “Don’t just do something, stand there!â€�

- Mason

So the scenario unfolds like this:

You are in the role of (choose one - manager, spouse, parent, friend). You say to your (employee, spouse, parent, friend) something along the lines of, “if you ever [fill in the blank here - fail, cheat, lie]… I will [again, fill in the blank here with some life changing threat such as, kill, fire, leave] you. What have you done? You have rolled a wood chipper into the room and told the person that if they mess up as described - AND YOU FIND OUT, their hand is going into the wood chipper!

Now. How likely is it that if, in the course of an ordinary life full of mistakes (as all of our lives are), our (employee, spouse, parent, friend) will disclose to us the fact that they have ‘messed up’, given the preconditions we have already described to them. In short - how many of them will VOLUNTEER to put their own hand into our wood chipper?

My point here is that too often we confuse management with coercion, leadership with control. Not only do these tend to be counterproductive - they create conditions in otherwise healthy relationships that are outright destructive. Let’s face it, the instinct for survival and as an extension the avoidance of painful situations is a powerful force. (After all that is how we learn basic survival as a toddler - hot stove hurts!) And so, given the choice between walking into the jaws of death and failing to disclose - many choose the latter. This leads to small lies, barriers, breakdown of communication and ultimately a failed relationship.

How does this manifest in business? Let me give you an example from a recent engagement:

Our client, a large international energy producer, was faced with a performance situation in which there were an unacceptably high number of emergency shutdowns in one of their plants. Each shutdown represented not only a potential hazard to human life, but the loss of many barrels of production and many thousands of dollars. After an extremely detailed six-sigma effort to address the issue, the problem continued. It was only after examining the situation through the lens of Human Performance, that is became clear that there was a human factor at play: in short - the wood chipper. Management had described very punitive conditions for errors. So people chose to hide the errors. Once the errors accumulated sufficiently - they resulted in an emergency shutdown.

Think about your own lives - both personal and business. How many of your relationships do you try to manage with a wood chipper approach? How much better might it be if we made it ’safe’ for those with whom we interact? This does not mean that we ignore failures, but rather that we approach them without devastating pre-conditions. After all - isn’t a mistake just another way to learn?

- Mason