I love when someone hires me to do a presentation and tells me, as a condition of the engagement, that they want “everyone to love it.”
And by “I love when that happens,” I mean, “Can we please get real?”
You don’t know what’s going on in someone else’s head. Managing outputs is not a tenable solution… unless you’re OK with whitewashed, banal stuff that is as ineffective as it is inoffensive. Outputs should be measured; inputs should be managed.
In America, we believe all men are “created” equal… but we don’t expect them to end there. We like to make sure everyone gets off to a clean start… trying to manage the end game riles us to our core.
If you manage people, this translates into giving your people the same opportunities and then leaving them to their own devices to see what they can do… by measuring the results.
Trying to manage the endgame is the equivalent of locking everyone into the same experience, regardless of where they started. This is what unions do, and why they elicit such a vociferous negative response from business.
Give your people the same opportunities, and let them each shape their own experience accordingly.
What a novel concept.
Give it a try.
Think about the expectations you have for the world around you; do you measure the end game, or do you manage it? Examples of managing the end game include treating people like cogs or rigging the system to ensure a particular outcome.
Is that you?
Or, “with malice toward none and charity toward all,” do you give people the tools they need and find joy in the variety of outputs they create with them?
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I'm Jason. I make people shine. My mission is to help 1 million people tell their stories better. 