Beyond Metrics: How To Define Success For The Human Advantage
By Helen Wada with Cath Bishop
For the first episode of Human Wise, I sat down with Cath Bishop. Former Olympic rower and diplomat turned successful business and leadership coach, Cath is author of The Long Win, which in 2020 was listed in the Financial Times’ Top 10 Business Books.
A standout theme from our conversation on the Human Wise podcast was Cath’s insightful wisdom on the definition of success.
Reframing success
As with all things in business, success must consider the human side. A failure to do so – or an insistence on defining success using metrics such as numbers and KPIs – means that we aren’t helping people to be at their best. In schools this could be grades, in work an end of year review, in sports a medal. These metrics do not leave room for the human side: for empathy, collaboration, creativity.
Cath: “I think one of the things that can lead us down either the wrong path or a better path is how we define what success looks like. We need to change the quality of what we value and measure and change the language that goes with that – only then can we unlock human potential.”
“If we take the human element out of our picture of success, which we do increasingly, with easy to measure KPIs we can find that we aren’t optimising the human advantage. In fact, quite the opposite… We’re creating an experience where people aren’t thriving.”
Finite versus infinite
How can we ensure our definition of success is one that protects, promotes and propels the human side of business, allowing organisations to become places full of creativity and collaboration?
Cath boils it down nicely, saying we need to distinguish between a finite mindset and an infinite mindset:
Finite – “I’ve got to achieve X, I must tick Y off my to do list, the numbers have to look like Z.”
Infinite – “I am on a journey of exploration and discovery, and the more that I experience and the more people I meet, the more my definition of success will change.”
Back to the definition of success… Success is about improving each day – it’s not just the easy to measure aspects, it’s about how I am communicating, how I am giving feedback, how I am recovering, and how my mindset is helping me deal with the uncertainty.
Being human at work means making room for constant evolution. It means understanding that when it comes to defining success, a finite mindset means missing out on the superpower organisations have at their very fingertips: the creativity and collaboration of their people!
We have an innate desire to learn and grow, which must be fostered within organisations. There is a need to connect; relationships are fundamental. There is a big shift required to understand what it means to be achieving your tasks through relationships. How do we achieve this? You need to REALLY understand people, their fears, their dreams, their strengths, you have to be able to create a connection and understanding.
Success is an ongoing journey
Cath: “We don’t just have an experience on the day the results come in, we all have an experience the next day too. What’s really important and part of this human mindset is appreciating that infinite journey in our lives where we will go through different phases, experience different things, develop in different ways and have different opportunities – and we’ll grow! And that’s what we really want to allow, enable and facilitate, because if we hold back that ability to grow and explore what we’re capable of, we’re holding back the opportunities that life gives us and the performance levels we could reach.”
If we can start to knit together what is important for the individual and what is important for the organisation when we define success, we begin to move into the sweet spot of approaching commercial thinking with a coaching mindset.
“Being commercial is ultimately about human connection.”
Key questions to ask yourself
What is the ideal environment for you and colleagues to thrive and what might be getting in the way of that at the moment?
What might be possible with greater collaboration?
How can you see work as a set of relationships rather than a set of tasks, and then invest in and 'measure' these relationships as the prime measure of success at work, daily, weekly, longer term?
The Human Wise podcast will continue to explore bringing together a coaching mindset and commercial thinking, with some fabulous guests ahead, stay tuned for future episodes.
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The full conversation with Cath Bishop is available on the Human Wise podcast.
For more information on the work Cath does, head over to LinkedIn or check out her website.
Human Wise releases new episodes bi-weekly and is available on all major podcast platforms.