Wow, was it just me or did the last year and a fair chunk of the first month of this year just fly by? According to Einstein time is supposed to slow down the faster you go, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in business. It seems that the faster I try to go the faster time tries to go too. It’s interesting how in just about any race with time, time has a tendency to win. Go figure.

I think I may have touched on this topic in the past, but since we are at the relative start of a new year, I think I’ll spend a little more time on it. As we start out on a new year with new opportunities, new goals and new hope, we cannot forget that we must also reflect on the past year. This reflection is normally referred to as an annual review. Depending on how you did last year this reflection can either be a pleasant or unpleasant experience. I think most of mine for the most part have been reasonably pleasant experiences. I think that is because a learned early on the difference between work and effort.

I have mentioned in the past that I have an affinity for physics. This seems to serve me in good stead when my son brings home his high school physics assignments such as building a bridge out of paper or trying to construct a capability to disperse the force of a mass rolling down an incline plane. It’s kind of cool to be a go-to guy for your son. I just hope I got the equations right.

I also find that sometimes it relates directly to business as well. To a physicist work is done when a force that is applied to an object which moves that object. The work is calculated by multiplying the force by the amount of movement of an object (W = F x d).

In this example “Work” would equate to the goal that was set for the individual or business at the beginning of the year, “Force” is the equivalent effort that someone expends in the pursuit of that goal and “d”, the movement is the equivalent of an almost unknown item which I’ll call an efficiency or “success rate”. So for business the equation for work would be Work = Effort x Success Rate, or W = E x SR.

What this means is that the effort expended and the achievement of the goal may or may not be positively linked. This would explain why some goals would seem to be easily attained with apparently little effort and some goals may be unobtainable regardless of the amount of effort expended.

This is something of a roundabout way of saying that just because you worked hard last year; it doesn’t mean you are entitled to a good year end review.

Everybody works hard these days. The exception might be “Wally” in the Dilbert comic strip (by Scott Adams), but by and large everyone puts forth the effort. Even Wally puts forth an effort in his quest to avoid work. Effort is good, but it is at this point table stakes.

“Work” as it is defined in the annual review is the measurement of the achievement that they effort generated. If you are in sales and you have a quota that means you have a numerical target, such as orders. You can put forth a great deal of effort but unless you actually get some orders, according to your compensation plan (and probably your sales manager) you didn’t really accomplish anything. So by these measurement criteria you in fact did no work.

Catch the difference here? Lots of effort does not mean you did any work.

I purposely try to create primarily quantitative objectives and goals for my teams. There will always be a certain amount of qualitative acknowledgement associated with them, but for the most part I want them to be numerical, and measurable in nature. By doing this you remove a great deal of the effort versus work type of discussion.

In business we keep score via the financial numbers. If you can’t create objectives and goals for any of the business functions that you may have, that somehow relate to or distill down to these types of financial numbers, then I might suggest that a review of the necessity of the function being measured might be in order. Again to simplify things: If you can’t create a viable metric for a function that relates to the achievement of one of the financial goals, you had better look at the viability of the function, goal and metric.

Numbers are finite. We all seemed to get a working knowledge of numbers dating back to approximately the second grade. We all know when one number is either larger or smaller than another number. It is usually not open to much interpretation. This concept usually leads to readily acknowledgeable annual reviews, regardless of the performance level.

Too many times we create “soft” goals that are somewhat open to management as well as staff interpretation. Any time there is an open interpretation of an objective you can be reasonably assured that there will be different interpretations of the achievement of the objective. This is the essence of the effort versus work example.

Non-quantifiable goals invite an effort based annual review. Quantifiable goals invite a work based review. Effort based reviews can lead to a basic inequality of reviews across an entire team. Instead of measuring progress and achievement you are instead measuring activity. Activity and progress are as different as effort and work. It is as different as splashing around in a pool (activity), and actually swimming across it (progress).

We all know that is possible to appear busy without actually accomplishing anything.

In looking back at the last year, and at last year’s goals it may be difficult to implement a quantifiable measurement scale, if the goals were not originally established with such a scale in mind. However, the other aspect of the early part of the year is that in addition to reviewing last year’s performance, it is the time and opportunity to set the goals and objectives for the coming year.

The beginning of the year provides leaders with the opportunity to modify the goals and objectives as well as the measurement scales and criteria so that they can be quantitatively based. By doing so the leader enables the team to focus on progress and achievement as opposed to activity, and work as opposed to effort. It enables the team to understand and make the distinction associated with knowing if they are doing something that will ultimately contribute to achieving an objective or if they are doing something that just keeps them busy.

The key point here is that when it comes time to review this year’s performance at the beginning of next year it would be to the benefit of all members of the team to have defined quantifiably goals, and a known scale by which they will be measured. It makes this time of the year a little easier for everyone involved.