#103: Effort and Results gap

Efforts and results are connected in the following way:

• Results typically require effort, sometimes in quantity and sometimes qualitatively.
• Efforts and results are separated by time. Sometimes they happen close together and sometimes they are separated by several years or even longer.

This gap is important to understand for a few reasons. For one thing, everyone's comfort level varies. Some like instant gratification and hence the time between effort and result has to be very short. Which also means such people are limited to small tasks and to small impact.

Others may have a higher tolerance for gaps between effort and result. At the extreme, they may not care about the result and indulge in the effort for its own sake. Such people will typically take on big, hairy problems.

Sometimes execution efforts begin thinking the gap is small enough to work on (anywhere from 1 week to 2 years) and when this gap begins to widen, commitment and interest begins to decrease.

If the desired result is 'too far away', build coalitions by breaking it down and defining intermediate results (milestones). Then sell the intermediate milestones as a way to mitigate risk.

There is no right or wrong or good or bad. Understand your comfort level with the gap will help you understand your motives and the capabilities you need to build. What matters is that once you commit to working towards a result, you treat it as a business decision when defining your effort. If you treat it as an emotional decision, then you are at risk of making poor investment decisions and depending too much on luck.