I have just had my end-of-year performance review at work (because it’s the end of our financial year).
Last July, I sat down with my manager and we agreed my goals for the year. Yesterday, I prepared for my review by reviewing my year at work against those goals: what I’ve achieved, what I am still working on, what I haven’t achieved. Today, I met with my manager and we discussed the year. (It was a robust and positive discussion, in case you’re wondering.)
In general, it’s easy to agree on whether I’ve done something or not.
What’s harder is to judge how well something has been done, which recognizes that performance is more than a tick-box exercise of whether I’ve I achieved a stated goal or not. We consider not just the achievement, but the level of performance and our behaviours as we work. At the end of the process, the outcome of the review will be a performance rating.
I subscribe to Randy Ingermanson’s Advanced Fiction Writing blog. Last week, he was discussing success and performance, quoting from a book called The Formula by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. Barabasi is a network scientist researching what causes some people to be successful when others aren’t.
Ingermanson sums up Barabasi’s research as:
Success depends on performance when this can be measured. But when performance can’t be measured, a person’s network drives their success.
One of the truisms of business and performance is that we can’t manage what we can’t measure. (Barabasi perhaps challenges that. I’ll have to read The Formula to find out.)
In business, this leads us to measuring how much we earn and how we earn that money, how much we spend and what we spend that money on, all in an attempt to ensure we’re spending our time and money on the right things, the things that will lead to the results we want.
It’s the formula for success.
As individuals, we often internalize this formula by believing that the more we earn, the more successful we are—because that’s the thing we can measure. As Christians, we know this is false. We are all equal in the sight of God:
There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus – Gal 3:28 (NIV)
Yet our actions don’t always match our beliefs. We say we believe we are all equal, then spend our lives seeking the formula for success.
That’s not to say success is bad. We are called to be good stewards of the talents we’ve been given.
Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace – 1 Peter 4:10 (NIV)
Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things – Matthew 25: 21 (NIV)
It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing financial success is the only kind of success that counts. That financial success is a sign we have been using our talents wisely. We assume that we can analyse our business, our writing, our life, and discover which actions lead to success, which don’t, and spend our lives pursuing the wrong kind of success.
As writers, that often means we’re measuring success through external measures—book sales, reviews, awards. Yet those aren’t things we can control, which puts us in a never-ending cycle of chasing success we never achieve.
Are we seeking personal or professional or financial success when we should be pursuing success by God’s measure? Is Barabasi right in saying that our success is driven by networks, by our relationships? If so, what is the most important relationship of all?
Our relationship with Jesus.
Perhaps, instead of chasing sales and reviews and awards, we should be living and writing in a way that brings us and others closer to Jesus.
That’s the formula for true success.