How To Know If What You're Doing Is Actually Working

One of my biggest fears as someone who works hard and makes sacrifices is that I’m doing the wrong things. The reality is, no matter how talented or consistent you are, if you’re not taking action in impactful ways then you’ll never generate the results you deserve.

That’s been me in business committing to a marketing tactic… In my energy trying to fix daily midday brain fog… And in my mindset when I got really discouraged by rejection.

At the heart of it, I didn’t know if what I was doing was actually working and it caused me to question my decisions. That led to hedging my bet trying to do too many things, not doing any of them well enough, and basically guaranteed that I would underachieve.

Ultimately it’s a matter of being crippled by uncertainty. If only I knew for certain that doing one thing would create undeniable progress, I’d do it all day long. If only I knew what specific inputs were responsible for positively influencing desired outputs… So that’s what I sought to create for myself.

The only way you can know if what you’re doing is actually working is by measuring it and drawing a correlation. This is central to the ‘4 Disciplines Of Execution’ philosophy where you’re encouraged to identify ‘lag measures’ and ‘lead measures’:

Lag measures are the outcomes you want at the end of the day… And lead measures are the activities that are most likely to generate those outcomes.

Here’s the process I’ve arrived at. First you get clear on what you want (lag measure), then you place your best bet on what you think is most likely to get what you want, then you focus up on doing that thing, and after you’ve done it for a significant enough amount of time, observe if more action leads to more results.

In many ways it’s an experiment, which is simple in theory but not necessarily easy in practice.

Here’s how I’ve operationalized this for myself to grow my business, using slightly different vocabulary:

1) Desired Outcome: Lead more workshops in online communities (which I’ve seen grows my business)

2) Measured Output: # of connections with individuals who lead these communities

3) Action Input: Reconnect with 5 people in my network every day, book catch up calls with them, find ways to add value to their world and if appropriate ask for referrals and recommendations

4) Conditions Of Experiment: Commit to doing that for 3 months without questioning the strategy

5) Set Target For Significance: Consider that 3 new aligned connections, one of which leading to collaborating in a Workshop, to be evidence of a meaningful outcome 

Again, the point is to know clearly how well something is working. With a more objective and informed look at it, you can better determine what to do next.

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