I had a conversation last night with a friend of mine that many people do not get to have.  It’s not one that you want to be eligible for but once you are, it’s an interesting one nonetheless.

I’m a cancer survivor.

Wow!  That makes me very uncomfortable and there are two reasons why:

1. Survivor’s guilt

2. I worry it will manifest another patient experience for me.

I wouldn’t wish my diagnosis and treatment experience on anyone.  Listen to Speaking of Impact episode 1 or check out my media appearances page to hear various versions of my story.

The conversation I had with my friends was about one of the side effects of chemotherapy.  There is a tremendous amount of research being done for cancer prevention, detection, and treatment but I’m not aware of nearly as much related to the side effects of treatment.  After all, how could I be anything but thankful that I’m even alive?  The side effects are hardly a complaint.  

Numbness

People who have been treated with chemotherapy can list many things they experience as a result.  One of them is a numb feeling in your extremities, especially when the temperature drops.  

I know what to expect when I go to a cold weather climate or doing something as simple as putting my hand into the freezer.  It isn’t all that debilitating but it is a reason why I choose to live in a warm weather climate.  

Numbness isn’t the worst of issues and for a short period of time, is relatively manageable.  However, the longer it lasts the more damaging and painful it becomes.

My mother-in-law, wife, and I went to Canada for New Year’s this past holiday season and had an amazing experience.  I wouldn’t change it but I had a terrible day on the trip where my toes couldn’t get warm.  They went numb without me noticing.  I suppose I am so used to it and it took long enough that I didn’t realize.  Towards the middle of the day I noticed I couldn’t really feel them.  By the time the evening came, I was in pain.  It was a rough night and I struggled to get around.

Underperformance

I thought I was prepared earlier in the day with boots, wool socks, and foot (and hand) warmers.  I was prepared enough to leave the hotel in freezing snowy weather but not prepared for a full day outside in that climate.  

The situation eventually caught up with me and I held the family back a bit dealing with my frozen toes.  

Underperformance is not always easy to recognize.  It can eat at you over time before it’s too late.  Most highly driven individuals and organizations don’t intend to underperform their capabilities.  They do because of distractions and bad habits.  

Habits

The most effective habits go mostly unnoticed.  Note that I said the most effective not the best.  There is a difference.

Some habits are very effective but not so good.  On the flip side, many of us have great ideas (think of your New Year’s resolutions) that never pan out.

The human mind is aptly designed to worry about what is immediate.  Perhaps this is why we love short-form video and repetitive dopamine hits these days.  I know it’s why I’ve sold some copies of Personal Finance in a Public World.  

It makes sense that we focus on immediate results but it doesn’t mean that it’s always the best.  The dangers that many of us face these days are not as imminent.  We have to be worried about more long-term risks and chronic disease than proximal hazards and animal attacks.  This has led to a disconnect between what we do know and what it causes later.

What It’s Not

We do NOT miss the short-term effects of our habits.  What we do is underestimate them.  

This means we are not distracted…well, I shouldn’t say that but it is not distraction that is getting you in this case.  It’s scale.

The Impactmaker movement strives to take giant leaps in helping people in need.  It’s led by you, impactmakers - people who are incredibly motivated to use their gifts and skills they have to make the world a better place.  

There’s no shortage of motivation and in this case, your motivation might be causing you some problems.  

The foundation of any good business or impact project is what drives it.  The longer an organization is around, the more habitual things become.  

Good leaders strive to identify good repetitive processes early in their efforts.  It helps them to scale and teach new stakeholders how to get involved.  Unfortunately, as they get farther and farther from those foundational activities, they less and less they feel the effects.

Clarity

Note that great leaders can be very intentional about checking in on all of his or her organization’s processes but still underestimate the effects of certain things.  Once again, it’s not about being unaware of results.  You can see that a process is not as crisp as it used to be or could potentially be improved.  

Perhaps the worst of this type of situation is when you notice someone is not being as effective as they can be but there are too many other things going for you to fix the situation.  You could either find someone to coach them up, train them yourselves, replace them, or execute their role yourself.  

You’re clear of solutions to a “minor” problem but the consequences of not making a change are presented in an intense fog.  There are “bigger fish to fry”.  While there are issues related to advanced tasks in your organization to worry about, none of those would be possible without the foundational tasks that came before (and will last beyond).  

Example

Let’s say you started an organization to help orphaned children and have spent the last decade.  Your primary work is identifying kids in need and helping them find loving families.  No one could argue with the value of this mission.

Early on in your impact project, you spend a lot of time developing relationships with the children.  You learned their names, backgrounds, what they liked to eat, and how they liked to play.  This helped you have meaningful conversations with families and make good connections between kids and potential foster and adoptive parents.  

Over the years, you began to expand your offering for kids and families and need to scale the donor base.  You were the natural person to tell the story of the organization and began traveling to do presentations.  Things went really well and you started raising more money and awareness for the cause.

You hired people to have some of those family conversations and get to know the children.  This is not bad.  In fact, it’s tremendously good.  You are using your gifts and skills to further the mission and you’re giving other people a chance to use their own gifts and skills.  This is building a generous culture!

You may not be as connected with the benefactors of your organization as you used to and that’s okay.  But what’s not okay is if those relationships are not prioritized as they ought to be.  You may have indicated otherwise to the people you hired or maybe you’ve been so successful at raising money and awareness that those people have been pushed beyond the foundational tasks they were originally hired to do.   

You’ve scaled but haven’t balanced the scale.  You could say to yourself, “Well, I can’t expect them to be me and the job is still getting done even if the family relationships aren’t as intimate.”  It’s not okay that the adoptions and foster arrangements are still being made.  It’s the age-old quality over quantity issue.

Your great efforts have allowed your organization to offer additional services.  Those services are not as effective if they aren’t offered to the right kids.  Everything still relies on the quality of understanding of your organization’s people as to whom to connect the kids.  Small shortcomings can lead to a huge mission drift (see E-Impact 119 for more on this concept and the book referenced in E-Impact 98) over time.   

Prevention

I say all of this because it’s important to recognize these things now if you’re in the early stages.  Don’t skip over this because you’re not there yet!  

It’s all about preventing the effective but not advisable habits.  Don’t scale too early and don’t accept underperformance.  It’s not being unnecessarily hard on your people.  It’s about making sure they know the most important things that make the organization successful, they know how to execute, and they are not overworked or misdirected in their action.  

It’s easy for everyone to become numb to underperformance when there are enough human and financial resources to take on more work.  In the example of the orphan services, it would be better to serve fifty kids effectively than seventy-five with mixed results. 

What to Do

The simple rule is to make sure your foundational tasks are always locked by prioritizing adjustments above all other things.  

Secondary considerations are scaling slowly, empowering people to do more of their current work before added work, and having a clear expectation of what acceptable work is (for you and everyone else).  

The most generous leaders are very intentional with their giving.  They don’t give just for the sake of giving or in order to “get the most out of people”.  You get the most from people by giving them the most.

Give people a great example with your own actions.  Give them tremendous training.  Give them adequate time to complete quality work.  Empower them to use their individual abilities to achieve the necessary quality of work.  And finally, make sure the foundational work is celebrated before anything else.

People will take pride in what you take pride.

Be proud of what must be done to help your organization overperform and you’ll never be numb to underperformance.