Only measure “better”

I’ve argued for a while now that the only output worth measuring organizationally for employees is their innovation, defined as a spectrum of performance from “status quo on the left to better in the middle to game-changer on the far right.” Yes, we need to have goals to aim for, but these are usually easy to come up with. If in sales, and you sold $1MM last year, it is relatively easy to conjure a target of north of $1MM this year and so on. What is infinitely harder is coming up with the plan or process to achieve whatever goal is set. What are the chances that you will achieve a higher goal if you used the same process as you did last year? That is, if you did things on the left side of the innovation spectrum, near the status quo marker. I do not know the answer to that but surely, it would be lower than if you did things more in the middle (better) or right of middle (towards game-changer). When coaching athletes, we make the distinction between process goals and outcome goals. Which athlete does not want to win or score the most goals? Not one. By focusing on the goal, and not what it takes to achieve the goal, athletes usually under-perform.