outcome generation 2: the ‘empty outcome’ syndrome

dreamers who do

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“A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.”

——

J.R.R. Tolkien

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Well.

This is part 2 of the outcome generation … and that means I plan on discussing what we have wrought by focusing so much on outcome in business. I would suggest there is actually a slightly unexpected outcome of having become an outcome focused generation.

What do I mean?

Surprise, surprise, surprise … the young people come in every day to work thinking it is all about outcome.

Results, baby, results.

Fun?

Say what!

Passion?

WTF.

Outcome?

You bet.

unicorns and dreamsIn fact … business says “give me results when you come in … or get out.”

Some research.

Just to make everyone feel better … there is a real reason young people do this <actually all of us have this mental feature>.

Now.

To be clear … this mental feature is no excuse … and outcome gets driven by an out of whack business barometer of what is important <kind of> … but there is a reason.

It is called ‘adaptive ignorance.’

 

This adaptive ignorance is there for a reason — we celebrate it as “concentration” and welcome its way of easing our cognitive overload by allowing us to conserve our precious mental resources only for the stimuli of immediate and vital importance, and to dismiss or entirely miss all else.

“Attention is an intentional, unapologetic discriminator. It asks what is relevant right now, and gears us up to notice only that.”

But while this might make us more efficient in our goal-oriented day-to-day, it also makes us inhabit a largely unlived — and unremembered — life, day in and day out.

 

This adaptive ignorance is a mental tool we adopt to concentrate, and avoid extraneous overload stimuli, so we can pay attention to … well … results.

Outcome.

This adaptive ignorance also suggests a generation more and more constrained by a couple of things:

 

outcome generation

–          Productivity/outcome <just getting shit done or out of the way or solved>

–          The ways we learn to see the world.

 

In addition … as we adapt our thinking to concentrate on what we believe is most important <at the exclusion of other things> we create something researchers call ‘search images.’ These are things all of us employ when we need to narrow our attention in a goal-oriented task. Unfortunately … this is only helpful or even possible if we know what to look for. In business this comes to life in bar graphs that get higher & higher as they move to the right or highlighted milestones written on big boards and crap like that. They narrow our attention <at the exclusion of other things>.

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“More is missed by not looking than not knowing.”

Thomas Mccrae

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Regardless.

This version of adaptive ignorance within the younger generation, this thing we older folk have created, has had an additional unexpected outcome. We seem to have a higher dissatisfaction, or even lack of respect, of the younger generation than even past generations have had.

In fact … I would argue this is so because we self absorbed older generation spend so much time thinking how worthless the younger generation is we don’t stop and think about why this may be so.

Well.

Think about this:

 

–          Why is it that so many of us older folk are stepping back and thinking about doing something that we call ‘matters’ now?

–          Why do we have bank accounts, houses, good educations, nice cars and cool clothes … and still seem to want more?

 

Well.

I call it the burden of the “empty outcome” syndrome. That is the disease of the older generation work force.

outcome results still fuckedWhat do I mean?

We have spent years and years in business everyday cranking out results.

Numbers … numbers … numbers.

More … more … more.

If you didn’t?

You weren’t successful.

 

What did we teach our kids?

Results, results, results.

Win <at any cost>.

Get good grades <not what did you learn>.

 

They watched us come in and out of the house … working gobs of hours … noticing that we were not really sure we liked what we were doing but always seeking to accumulate results <things, outcomes, etc.>.

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“There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.”

G.K. Chesterton

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But.

Here is the deal. The real truth.worse making it whoops

What I believe many of us older folk are just understanding … it really ain’t about outcome <as we have defined it to date>.

There is more to life than ‘outcome.’

And, well, we feel empty now that we know this after having worked for years and gobs of hours solely focused on outcome <hence the ‘empty outcome syndrome’>.

 

What is the empty part?

In 1949, Harry F Harlow, Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin, outlined something called “intrinsic motivation” … or the joy of the task itself. Research reflects that for most complex tasks intrinsic motivation is a much more powerful drive than any external motivator.

And a key part of this motivator is purpose.

 

Daniel Pink has stated … “The most highly motivated people, not to mention those who are most productive and satisfied, hitch their drives to a cause larger than themselves.”

 

Research bears this out. In other words, outcome … or even economic incentives alone … do not cause individuals to perform complex tasks better <but intrinsic motivation will>.

worse picardfacepalmIn the end.

While an older generation rue careers of outcome … staring in our business  mirrors seeing only careers of empty outcome … we are at the same time extremely uncomfortable with a younger generation who doesn’t think but rather is results-oriented <and, yes, they can be very different and siloed>.

We have wrought this.

We can undo this.

Now that is an outcome I can embrace.

Let’s destroy the obsessive focus on outcomes & create a business world focused on substantive intrinsic motivations.

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Written by Bruce