This reminds me of my hero of project management, Tom DeMarco.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_DeMarco" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_DeMarco</a><p>His approach was that every task is either 100% complete or 0% complete.<p>No task is ever "80%" complete. If you really think that it is, then break it down into smaller tasks, 80% of which are 100% complete and 20% of which are 0% complete. This way it becomes much clearer what is complete and what remains to be done.<p>I have never allowed anyone to report anything as n% complete for values other than 0 or 100. As soon as someone does, that's a pretty good sign that they may be confusing motion with action.<p>Remember OP's discussion with Jim...<p><pre><code> Me: Jim, how are we doing with getting Ansys ported?
Jim: Great, I have a bunch of calls into them.
Me: How are we doing on the Nastran port?
Jim: Wonderful, they said they’ll get back to me next month.
Me: How about Dyna 3D?
Jim: It’s going great, we’re on their list.
</code></pre>
Now imagine how much different that conversation would be if each question started with, "Which tasks are complete and which tasks are incomplete?"
1) As a child the most important thing is effort, not results. If you try really hard your teacher/parent will reward you, even if the results are crap.<p>2) If you watch "business people" on TV they're involved in phone calls, meetings, and deal making. No boring or hard stuff that involves solo work for hours on end.<p>Put together those two ideas and you get people who think their <i>entire</i> job is to make an <i>effort</i> by doing what "business people" do all day.<p>This is why someone could feel entirely satisfied with themselves, even if they haven't produced a single meaningful result through all their effort.
The specific delusion that motion is action is but one instance of what I'll call "value generation bias".<p>Most people have a pretty poor sense of whether they are generating value, and therefore seek to reassure themselves that their time is well spent by taking pride in whatever accomplishments they can track and their peers can recognize. We need this validation in order to feel that we have a purpose, and are serving that purpose.<p>Successful entrepreneurs are characterized by a merciless drive to remove bias from their understanding of value generation. They do so by working in enterprises that inherently provide this feedback -- like startups that die if they're not generating enough value -- or by soliciting feedback from trustworthy sources like customers, advisors, or numeric measurements.<p>If you are the kind of person who places little faith in value assessments made without clear reference to a worthy goal -- grades, job titles, signs of social status -- and you actively seek out information that challenges your own value judgments in order to reduce your own bias, you are probably moving in the right direction.
I find I make this mistake constantly: I've contacted someone, I've put the ball into their hands, but the goal is still as far away as it was when I started. It's an easy trap to fall into, at least for me, because clients have as much to do as we do to get various projects completed. Now that I've seen the issue, however, I can watch for it and take action where appropriate.
I noticed that when I use the expression "the ball is in their hand", I don't really care about the outcome. I'm just happy I don't have to deal with it right now.<p>It's funny how accurate the expression is, now that I think about it. Handing over the ball is a sure way to prevent you from scoring.
As a manager, how do I know I'm not making an opposite mistake - confusing action with motion? In other words, how do I know I'm not too hard on somebody? The guy is making dozens of calls, sending hundreds of e-mails, and going to dozens of meetings to get people to write software for my machine with no customer base, but I don't see any concrete results. How do I know it's not <i>my</i> fault for asking him to do an impossible task?
It's easy to confuse activity (non business results-producing tasks) with productivity (direct business results-producing tasks). An entrepreneur is one who attacks that difference with zeal.
You could swap the words motion and action in this article, and it wouldn't change the meaning.<p>i.e. why not:
action: just doing something, whatever
motion: making forward progress towards a goal. <i>movement</i><p>The words only server as placeholders -- they might as well be X and Y. Break out a dictionary once in a while.
Very simple, yet insightful article. This is something everyone should look out for-not just entrepreneurs. When it comes down to it, we're measured by our results not by our efforts.
The key point:<p>> My brain was wired to focus on the end-point and work backwards, removing each obstacle in my path or going around them all while keeping the goal in sight.<p>Which is a really good one.