Often, men and women over thirty suddenly catch themselves thinking: “You set goals, climb, strive, achieve, and now, you have almost everything you could think of ... But for some reason it’s empty. And unhappy."
It is often thought that achievements in the field of social (career, financial) often contradict achievements in the field of personal, family. Maybe so, especially for women, but it would be most interesting to consider an option where, at first glance, there is everything - a career, and a husband, and children, and prosperity. But still empty and uncertain in the soul.
When I asked such people what they think about the past period of time during which they achieved their goals, they rarely remember anything at all. More precisely, the memory keeps a formal chain of events, a person consoles himself that much has been done, mentally congratulates himself on what has been achieved, but the memories themselves “do not warm”. And this is the essence of the problem - life was not lived, but run through, experienced in haste and bustle, many things were denied to oneself, many things were given up. And there is no pleasure from achievements. And even children and family quickly turn into a routine - still, a person “reached” a wedding, gave birth to a child, but further life consists of a process! And he already boring life”, he needs new goals, new “conquests”.
Let's conditionally call one category of people procedurals, and the other - resultants. They are formed in different ways. The psychology of a performer is born in constant demands from the society, relatives: you must achieve this and that, otherwise you will be considered a loser. The resultant does not know how to be content with what he has, he is always dissatisfied with himself, his standard of living, he constantly compares himself with others (as, most likely, his parents compared). And therefore, there is always someone or something that does not allow him to live in peace, forcing him to set ever higher goals and rush towards them with all his might.
The vulnerability of this position is that such a person does not always have enough time and desire to think about: are these his goals? And does he really need to have what he so stubbornly strives for? After all, everyone is really different.
And without having time to think about whether he specifically needs the indicated wealth or status, or even a family, the performer becomes a hostage to ideas that may actually contradict his subconscious aspirations. After all, any person in the subconscious has some corner of true desires, if you like - his mission in this world. But there is no time to think about it either.
Liliana, a successful business woman. Her husband is a solid businessman, she is the owner of a network of beauty salons. Both of them strove for prosperity, in a hurry to "take their own", which included money, and the creation of a family, and the birth of a child. And suddenly, in her thirties, Liliana realizes that she does not know her teenage daughter at all, who “for some reason” began to use drugs! And "for some reason" does not understand at all why her husband became indifferent to her. She can easily list everything she has achieved, but she really cannot answer the question of what her husband’s tastes are, what he really is, what he dreams of, just as she is a somewhat abstract woman for him. And for her birthday, he gives her all the same roses, although she does not like them. Their album is full of photos from exotic countries, but when I ask them to describe some romantic moment, a moment of real unity, she suddenly starts crying. Because memory is silent. And neither a two-story apartment in Sokolniki, nor three mink coats, nor even one's own business can save - after all, it was not chosen to one's liking. But because "prestigious, profitable, stable."
The trouble of all scorers is boredom, tired of that what surrounds them constant thrust to change partners (after all, he/she has already been conquered, more is needed!) and the attitude that the outside world should constantly give them incentives - new "baits", entertainment, shake-ups.
Once Milan Kundera wrote that the speed is directly proportional to the power of oblivion. This means that the faster we go through life, the less we remember and the poorer our inner world, while a person who wants to truly fill it involuntarily slows down, savoring every step, every memory or spiritual movement, every your breath.
Process
The procedural, on the other hand, grows out of interest in one's own "I". For him, the principle of "know thyself" is not an empty phrase. In addition to interest in himself, he has no less interest in the world. He is not in a hurry, and therefore knows everything much deeper than his opponent. It is the procedural that can enjoy one partner for years and does not know the word “boredom”, it is he who, after sitting on the couch for a couple of hours, comes up with an ingenious business solution and wakes up rich the next day. It is he who is the “minion of fate”, to whom, although in fact the secret is simple: “The one who is in no hurry anywhere succeeds everywhere,” Professor Preobrazhensky answers Bormental’s question. And you can’t say that Bulgakov’s hero didn’t achieve anything in life! It's just that due to the lack of haste, the procedural has time to highlight the main thing and correctly use both his abilities and the possibilities of the world. The philosophy of the process is centered around the fact that every moment of life is worth enjoying, because the next one may not be.
Maxim is a currently in demand designer. At first, his path was not easy: he searched for himself for a long time, refused to work where he did not like it, was content with little. However, with the soul doing the work in which he was actually in love, after some time he was able to declare himself. And he began to invest in advertising his ideas and solutions. A couple of years later, a partner was found who was ready to invest in a common business. Things went well, wealth was formed. I managed to buy a house, get a car. And after some time, the “woman of dreams” also met. Interestingly, Maxim leads a rather secluded life, sits for hours at drawings, builds computer solutions for them. A lot of housework, a recently born child. And not in a hurry. It's nice to look at him - he's happy.
The pursuit of a result that has not been properly understood can be likened to a neurotic reaction: people seem to run away from themselves, hide behind achievements, as if wanting to say “look at me, you can’t have any claims against me, I beat you all, I have everything, respect me!” And it sounds like a cry for help.
Because behind this is often the fear of emptiness inside, the fear of underestimating others, and it turns out that such a person is rarely confident in himself - otherwise he would live the way he wants. And he wouldn't care what others think. But if there is no inner knowledge of oneself, there is no feeling of inner rightness, then one can shield oneself from the truth only by chasing results. Where the main thing is not to be alone with yourself.
Many are taught to set specific goals tied to a specific date that can be measured and so on (the well-known SMART). I myself have set similar goals for a long time. With this approach, a person focuses on the result of achieving the goal, and the process of achieving the goal is missed. And it is not entirely clear what to do with this goal later, after it has been achieved. By limiting the goal to a specific result tied to time, we thereby limit the duration of the joy that we will experience when reaching the goal.
What happens if you set a goal, focusing more on the process of achieving than on the result?
I will try to demonstrate the difference between setting a “goal-result” and a “goal-process”.
A couple of examples of different goal setting:
Example one:
The goal is to earn $10,000. And what after that? Is it possible to earn less again, or should the goal be to earn more? Let's say $15,000. In the second case, we again fall into the “what next” trap and again find ourselves on a carousel in pursuit of a new value for the same goal.
How can this goal be formulated differently? I want to live in abundance, I want not to deny myself anything, I want my income to increase by 15% per month. There are no questions, this goal is not specific and it is unlikely will be tested SMART, but it becomes clear what to do with it later. Being rich does not mean earning a certain amount of money. This means having wealth and savings that are constantly growing and multiplying.
People, setting a goal to earn some amount of money or buy an apartment or a car, think that they will become rich. But this is not so at all. After achieving such goals, people do not become rich, and those who still earn the amount of their dreams cannot understand why they did not receive the expected happiness and what to do next.
How is the process different from the result? What is a process approach?
How to learn to improve using a process approach?
What separates a process from a result?
Result- this is what we have at the end of our actions. For example, the result might be:
- the amount of money earned for the period;
- the time during which we ran the distance;
- the amount of gasoline consumed in a certain time;
- the weight that was lost at the end of the diet;
- the number of timely arrivals to work and much more.
All the results obtained are indicators that we receive as a result of certain actions. What action? What leads us to these indicators and why did we get these and not other indicators? Can we manage these indicators, improve them and how to do it? We can, and for this we must understand, thanks to what sequence of actions we get these results. And it is this sequence of actions with certain characteristics that will be process. The process answers the question: “how are we going to act?”. Therefore, in order to get a different result at the output, we must change the process, i.e. apply a process approach and then a properly built process will be able to provide us with the required result.
Consider examples of processes in conjunction with their results:
For the result "the amount of money earned for the period", the process can represent, for example, sequential actions to attract new customers or expand the grocery basket for existing customers. Different approaches to product promotion give different results. That is why, in order to increase sales, managers are trying to determine the most effective methods interaction with customers and train their employees in these methods. These methods, scheduled at the time of their transfer to employees, may reflect the process of developing employees to form them certain knowledge on sales, and the employee’s work built on the basis of the training will determine the process of interaction with customers, which allows influencing the result in terms of the amount of money earned over the period.
For the result “time to overcome the distance”, the process can be a training schedule. This graph should talk about how the athlete trained, i.e. what exercises, for how long and with what regularity he performed.
For the result "the amount of gasoline consumed in a certain time", the process can be the route of the car with the indicated average speed on the sections of the road traveled.
For the “weight lost at the end of the diet” result, information about the required food intake during the diet can be used as a process.
For the result “number of on-time arrivals to work”, the process will be the sequence of actions preceding the arrival to work. Actions must be clearly defined and digitized over time.
As can be seen from the examples, in order to describe the processes, in most cases, it is necessary to know the sequence and time of the actions performed. As a rule, with the correct display of the process, the result can be predicted with a high degree of probability. For the correct presentation and reading of the process, it is recommended to use a schematic display, which allows you to superimpose the main stages of the process with their characteristics on the time axis.
On the question: “What is important for business?” There is an opinion that first of all the result is needed, and the process is a secondary matter. If you eventually achieve the goal, then, they say, it does not matter by what means it was done, how much it cost you. That is, the process itself is NOT important, but the goal is important.
But is it? If the price of success is, for example, a broken family, broken relationships, can we talk about success at all in this case? Unlikely.
Let's look at this question a little deeper and make sure that
to oppose the process and the result is wrong. In achieving any goal, both are important.
If we compare business with sports, and such a comparison is quite appropriate, because there is an element of competition and competition here, then we can say that the result of the race always depends on how the process was set up, that is, on training. An athlete, training, dreams of an Olympic award. But if he is not interested in training, if he does not enjoy victories over himself, he is unlikely to “run” to his dream, since, figuratively speaking, he will not have enough “breath”.
If we take into account the fact that many modern businessmen are taught to take a hobby, a favorite thing as the basis of their business, then it is obvious that they will pay considerable attention to the process.
If you like what you do, then you will be more creative in solving problems. It happens that while working for a result, a person still does not see the fruits of his work, but it is the interest that feeds him, it is the fascination of the process that helps him overcome difficulties.
Managers, for whom the goal is most important, may treat their employees with disdain. Yes, sometimes toughness is needed in business, and in the end, the meaning of any work as a result, but it is very important when the process itself gives pleasure to a person or a team. Otherwise, what's the point in it? The moment of receiving the crown of glory is short-term, but the path to this award can be a life-long one. And if the process itself, the very way to achieve the goal was uninteresting, then what is the point of the reward?
Process, result and model of excellence
There are business excellence models (excellence models, more abbreviated) against which businesses can self-evaluate. These models are also used for organizing and holding prestigious competitions, such as the European Foundation for Quality Management Award. Similar Prizes exist in the CIS and in the Russian Federation (this should not be confused with numerous prizes operating on the principle of "pay - fly").
So, the model of excellence is built in such a way that processes and results are present in it in the proportion of 50 to 50. That is, a perfect business is perfect when it has equally well developed processes and stable positive results.
What do they proceed from when creating such models in the proportion of 50 to 50? From the fact that if there is a worthy result, but the processes of the enterprise (business) are not built up in a perfect way, then the repeatability of the results is very doubtful. It turns out that an enterprise (business) that demonstrates excellent results (including over a long period of time), but is also unable to demonstrate its processes in a classy way, may not confirm the brand of a successful enterprise in the future. Like this.
At the same time, it happens the other way around: the processes are built up, even if you demonstrate achievements at the exhibition, but, alas, there is no result worthy of these processes. This may either mean that these processes have just been built, and the results will have to wait a bit. Or it means enterprises (businesses) on the process.
The situation called "process for the sake of process" is the way to increase costs, to demotivate staff, to change concepts, and, ultimately, this is the way to business bureaucratization and loss of competitive advantages.
This means that if both the prevalence of the result over the process and the focus on processes to the detriment of the results are bad, then it is necessary to achieve the “golden mean”, the proportion of 50 to 50.
It remains to understand how to digitize processes and results, how to determine these proportions between processes and results, based, for example, on the models of excellence already mentioned. But that, as they say, is a completely different story ....
Choose a job you like
and you won't have to work a single day in your life
Confucius
I had such a case last year. I worked with one boy. He was in 11th grade. Great guy, friendly, intelligent, very pleasant to talk to. She sings and dances at school. But with mathematics, he was, to put it mildly, not very good. Once he was preparing with me for the GIA in mathematics in the 9th grade. And here he came again at the 11th. The goal is to pass the exam in mathematics with at least the minimum scores.
Okay, we're dealing with it. The moment came when we came to the solution of prototypes. We started with B1. I reminded him everything about percentages, showed him the solution to two or three problems. "All clear?" “Yes, everything is clear.” - "Okay, decide for the next lesson 20 options for B1 prototypes."
He comes next time. "I've done everything?" - "Yes". - "Any questions?" - "No, everything is clear." "Okay, let's see." - Not a single correctly solved task! NONE OF THE 20!!!
Another example. Already this year. Also an eleventh grader. At the first meeting, I ask him: “How many tasks do you usually manage to solve on control tests?” - "All". “And the marks?” - "2 or 3".
For me, such cases were a mystery for a long time. How so? Wonderful guys, not stupid, not lazy, and they want to study, and they want to get good grades. What's the matter?
I received the answer unexpectedly at one training in time management. It turns out that there are two types of people: “process people” (processors) and “result people” (resulters).
For "result people" the main value is the ultimate goal of the work. They are most effective when they know the answer to the question: why do this?
These are people for whom the main thing is to get results. They strive to complete any business as soon as possible (sometimes even at the expense of quality). Such people say: “The winner is always right. End justifies the means".
At school, this is a student who strives to get a good mark, and it doesn’t matter in what way, not necessarily honestly.
Example from adult life- these are people who do not care where and by whom to work, as long as they are paid a lot. They do not hesitate to leave any job if it starts to pay little.
"People of the Process"- a few others. It’s not that they don’t strive for the result, we all strive for the result, but for them the value is the process itself.
Such a person may in some cases say that the process is for him the end result. He says: "The main thing is not victory, but participation."
For such people, salary is not as important as a good team, some benefits that arise in the process of work, interest, etc.
At school, this is a student who likes to solve difficult mathematical problems or read War and Peace, not because it was asked, but because it is interesting.
Another example: women who love to embroider. For them, carefully laying stitch to stitch is so pleasant, such a pleasure!
And the children who play football with abandon for hours! Do they play just to score a goal? No, they like the process of the game itself. Children in general, no matter what they play, are completely given to the game, completely in the process, enjoy it.
However, as they grow older, especially at school, a person begins to be strongly tuned in to the result. Result, we need results! And it often turns out that the student no longer enjoys the process of cognition itself, but strives only for marks. They are praised for them, they are scolded for them. And parents first of all ask: “How much did you get?” Instead of asking: “What did you learn in the lessons?”
So the guys I talked about at the very beginning have the idea that the main thing is the result, that is, the tasks solved. And the fact that the tasks are solved somehow is not true - this is not the essence of it.
What is the best way for a tutor to do this?
First, you need to know the subject well and imagine where the student may have mistakes in order to detect them very quickly.
Secondly, you should understand what is happening (this is what I try to explain in this article). The guys don’t want bad things, they just understand the task that way (it was necessary to solve these prototypes, so I solved them, but I’m not interested in understanding the intricacies).
Thirdly, it is necessary to convey to the student that his goal is to learn how to solve such problems in order to achieve a more global goal in his life. In the case of eleventh-graders, this is to pass the exam at the required level.
