The difference between Hillary and Trump — Confusing Effort with Results

C P Sennett, a multi award winning business owner, trainer and author based in Suffolk, England, wrote,”Don’t confuse efforts with results….”

People have a great pit into which they fall. It is the bottomless pit called effort. We see this in public schools, colleges, universities, businesses, private lives and in government. There is a tendency to confuse effort with results, leading to individuals and institutions being graded on trying, not their results or outcomes. Doing something does not result to getting something positive done. When people and institutions lose sight of the result, mission, goal or objective bad things happen.

The only true measure of success is achieving results.

Effort can result in success, achieving the result, but it may also end in failure to achieve the result. Failure is a good thing if one learns from their mistakes and corrects for them to increase the possibility of success, i.e. achieving the result.

In 2011 Alex Adamopoulos wrote in his column “Confusing Effort with Results”:

I first heard this saying in 2001 from an executive I was working for who had the decency and courage to pull me aside one afternoon and share that although my work ethic and effort was not in question, the results, or lack of them, were in question. To be completely transparent, I was speechless when he explained this principle to me. I realized in that moment that I was viewing my work efforts as a measure of my success vs. weighing the results they were producing. I imagine this is a difficult conversation to have with anyone as a manager but it is certainly more difficult and challenging when you are having it with someone who has a big title and is expected to deliver quite a lot back to the business.

Forbes Magazine’s Paul B. Brown did a column titled, “If You Want To Be Successful, Don’t Confuse Being Busy With Getting The Right Things Done.” Brown wrote:

Just because you show up at work every day doesn’t mean you are getting anything done.

In fact, thinking about the numbers of hours you work, just confuses the issue.

Time is not a factor. Quality, making progress, and accomplishing your goals is.

Americans are frustrated with the lack of results, particularly when it comes to the political class.

Daily we see press releases about legislation introduced, rules formulated and regulations implemented. What is missing are the results. First question: Did what was done create results? Second question: Were those results positive or negative?

Former Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater wrote this in his book “The Conscience of a Conservative“:

“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is “needed” before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ “interests,” I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.”

Goldwater understood that government programs which “have failed their purpose” are never repealed. Ronald Reagan at his first inaugural said, “Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work-work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.”

In other words government’s purpose is to get results, without doing harm.

Both Goldwater and Reagan understood that government had become effort oriented at the expense of the people. Is it not the time to measure the success of government based on results? Is it not the time to hold government to task for it’s results? It it not time for public works at every level to be based upon success? Success as defined by the public?

This election cycle is all about two forms of governing – one that is effort based and the other that is outcome based.

The idea of effort versus results is embodied in the campaign slogans of the presumptive candidates for president. Hillary Clinton’s campaign slogan is “Hillary for America.” Donald Trump’s is “Make America Great Again.” The operative words are “for” and “make.” For is a preposition, make is a verb. One is passive, the other is active.

Which one is focused on effort? Which one on results.

Which candidate do you want? The effort one or result one?

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