Beware of Phantom Victory—Impressions after reading "Upstream Thinking" (5)

After writing about the three major obstacles to upstream thinking, the author proposed 7 ways to deal with the challenges. Among these methods, the most inspiring part to me is the part about "ghost victory".

The so-called "ghost victory" is the apparent success that masks actual failure. The author explains this concept using the story of a baseball team. According to the author's meaning, there are two kinds of "ghost victory". One is that success is due to the general trend rather than personal efforts. The so-called pig can fly into the sky when the wind comes. The other is the alienation of indicators, including the inconsistency between measurement indicators and the ultimate mission, or even indicators harming the ultimate mission.

When I saw the first "ghost victory", I thought of the "Millionaire" joke. Sometimes what we think of as success is indeed due to the general trend, and a rising tide lifts all boats. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t go with the flow, but it does mean we need to be wary of some of our “successes.” There is a saying that I quite agree with, "Money earned through luck will eventually be paid back through strength." After all, if the wind stops, the pig will still return to the ground.

When I see the second kind of "ghost victory", I think of KPIs, OKRs, etc. Anyway, everything related to the so-called "performance", this is what we work hard to achieve every day. achieved. As a result, we have been working hard for a long time, but we have no time to pay attention to whether it is really effective. The reason for not having time to pay attention is actually the three major obstacles to upstream thinking. The inability to see problems is because we take everything for granted; the lack of responsibility is because we are paid to do things, and other situations are not within the scope of work; the tunnel vision is because money and energy are limited. But this does not mean that we should not set these indicators, because after all, modern scientific management is effective; what it says here is that we must be vigilant about the indicators set by our mission, because no matter how many indicators we have, we cannot cover more than one country. Dimension's mission, when we complete the prescribed action, we still have to think about what this action will bring.

For these two kinds of "ghost victories" (the author writes three in the book, but the third is a special case of the second), the author gives a test list for checking.

The "rising tide" test

The misalignment test

The laziness and neglect test

The sacrilegious mission test

Accident Consequence test

The "rising tide" test is used to check whether our success is the general trend; the misalignment test is used to check whether our short-term indicators are compatible with the long-term mission; the lazy administration test is used to Check how someone who wants to be lazy will accomplish the target with the least effort; the mission-blasphemy test is used to check whether the success of our short-term goals will harm the long-term mission; and the final unintended consequences test is to check our long-term mission itself Are there any unintended consequences?

I think if we can check our recent behavior according to the contents of the list every once in a while, our actions will be more effective. Even just checking the action itself can lead to improvement.