Don’t Confuse Results with Effort

Quite often I engage with team members that complain about all the hard work they do without achieving the desired result.

I like to use the fly analogy as I discuss with them that all the effort in the world doesn’t mean anything if you don’t achieve your desired result. Have you ever witnessed a fly that is bouncing off a window, trying and trying to get outside? All it is doing is just bouncing and bouncing against the glass using all the effort in the world to get to the outside. All the fly had to do was take a different tact and fly through the open door 10 feet away but it’s trying and trying to get out that window. The end result is the fly usually ends up dead on the window sill instead of achieving the result of getting outside by trying a different method.

I use this analogy to illustrate to my team to find the ultimate goal and work backwards from there so that you can achieve the result through minimum effort. All the hard work in the world doesn’t mean a thing if you can’t achieve your results.

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