Is "leading by numbers" leading you to failure?
As the COP26 U.N. Climate Conference wraps up today, you’ll likely encounter plenty of number-filled recaps of the progress—or lack of progress—made by world leaders over the past 2 weeks. There will undoubtedly be summations of the billions of dollars in monetary commitments, summations of the metric tons of CO2 reduction commitments, and perhaps even summations of the amount of fossil fuels required to fuel the conference and the tens of thousands of people who converged upon Glasgow to participate.
But as big as those numbers might sound, there will continue to be people representing every climate-related angle there is asking, "So what? What do these numbers even mean?"
And whether or not you care to dive into COP26 numbers, this is a good time to ask how much your stakeholders actually care about the numbers you're relying upon to measure progress, motivate your teams, and create urgency.
The headline: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐜 1.5: 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐤𝐬’ 𝐤𝐞𝐲 𝐞𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐚𝐥 (by Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press)
The goal: to (𝐆)𝐫𝐨𝐰, (𝐏)𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 (𝐒)𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 success by pondering these 3 questions throughout your day:
💡 How many qualitative metrics should you use to measure "meaningful" growth?
💡 Are you over-using or mis-using numbers to protect a narrative?
💡 How much time do you spend helping stakeholders understand their direct connection to "the numbers?"
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Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
Hello and welcome to another Live episode of the energy detox a petroleum based blend of leadership conversations guaranteed to boost your professional and personal output by flushing away the hidden and often toxic barriers to peak performance. I'm your host, Joe Sinnott, a chemical engineer, executive coach. And 5989 Day veteran of the energy industry, helping you tap into the same resources fueling today's most successful and sustainable leaders. And today, we're going to talk about how those leaders avoid inappropriate relationships with numbers, how those successful leaders use numbers to their advantage, while avoiding the temptation to overuse numbers and in turn, degrade their message to grade their progress and in some cases, degrade the the morale and the enthusiasm of their stakeholders. And to drive this conversation today, as we've been doing over the last three weeks, we're going to take one recent headline from the energy industry to hammer home this point and in turn, ask you three questions that will help you grow, protect and sustain success. And that headline this morning comes from the cop 26 conference over in Scotland, where it is the final day of this two week conference. And throughout the last two weeks, there have been no shortage of headlines filled with numbers, lots of numbers that focus on the 197 countries that are there the 10s of 1000s of people that are there, all of the various commitments the billions of dollars that countries are committing to fight climate change and move forward in the energy transition, the all the numbers of metric tonne commitments in terms of reductions of co2, all of the percentages that are out there all of the year targets and the number of years that it will take for countries to get to netzero. So many numbers, so many numbers, including the most important one, which again, this headline focuses on, which is the 1.5 degrees Celsius of temperature increase since the pre industrial age. And again, this headline, this article that you can see here, and you can go to via the link in the show notes, discusses the origins of the 1.5 number, the realistic nature of the 1.5 degrees Celsius number and, and dives into a little bit more detail about why that number has been chosen to drive all of the messaging and, and really all of the attempts that progress that have been made this week and over the last I guess 26 cop conferences regarding climate change. But again, as is always the case, the goal today is not to dive into the details of that article or the 1000s of articles that you can read about cop 26. But instead to use that article and all those articles as an excuse to focus on you as a leader. And the important thing today is whether or not you might be over relying on numbers to drive home your message to make progress. And whether again, you're you're injecting numbers that really don't mean much. So again, at the outset here, I alluded to my 5989 days in the oil and gas industry. So what what does that mean? Why would I say that instead of just 16 years? Well, maybe to serve a purpose maybe to get your attention maybe to to make it seem like I have more experience in the energy industry, then, you know, then then I really do or maybe to make it seem like I have more energy industry, then you know, the other executive coaches out there who will you know, who, on average have 5988 days less experience in this particular industry than I do? Whatever the case might be, obviously, I can use numbers like that to my advantage. But when I overuse numbers like that, and when you overuse numbers and your communication with your stakeholders, it is going to degrade your effectiveness. So today, the three questions we're going to ask is to help you avoid degrading your effectiveness. And again, part of the impetus for this is also the fact that I work with many people who have a engineering mindset, if you will, who are coming from technical backgrounds who have had many technical roles throughout their careers as I've been fortunate to have, and who find themselves now in a leadership position or moving closer to a leadership position and can't quite shake their dependency or their their tug towards every lines on numbers and using numbers at every stage of the game. So again, these questions are applicable to anybody, but particularly for those who might be inclined to rely on numbers more so than they should. So with all that being said, let's dive into the first of three questions today. And that first question is, how many qualitative metrics should you use to measure meaningful growth? And obviously, that
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question has a bit of forced irony in it to talk about quantifying the number of qualitative metrics that you should be using and to also point to the fact that Many companies, especially their earnings releases will will talk about meaningful growth meaningful value meaningful XYZ, when, of course, meaningful in and of itself is a very qualitative number. So taking this somewhat tongue in cheek question, the important thing to take away from this is, are you relying on too many numbers? Do you need at times to take a step back and use words and use phrases that might resonate more with people and use qualitative measures? I had a conversation yesterday with a group of people talking about, again, how to get the energy industries message out there to the population without relying on the same old attempts to just throw numbers out there. Throw numbers out there about the you know, the percentage decrease in your home heating bills over the winter? Yes, those are stark numbers. Those are very important numbers. But at some point they become to begin to lose their luster. Right? So what if the average Pennsylvania has saved $500 A year or $1,000 a year over the last 10 or 12 years? People at some point are going to say, Well, what have you done for me lately? And to do that you need perhaps different attempts at messaging, different attempts to qualitatively talk about how much better we are now versus our peers in other parts of the country or other parts of the world. And sometimes numbers don't do that justice. Sometimes, you just need to talk to people and say, Would you rather live like people in XYZ, who are living on the brink of poverty or living with, you know, unnecessary stresses because of the policies that politicians or government officials or whoever else there is employing that are hurting people, you know, sometimes numbers don't quite have the impact, especially when they're buried among dozens of other numbers. So to earnings releases, right, earnings releases have tons of numbers in there that are theoretically meant to help move a message forward. But at the end of the day, many of them just mask an overall story about what you know, what are you trying to do? Are you moving in the right direction? Or are you not, and most importantly, the messaging that you just within a company use to motivate their individuals to try to generate excitement and morale among employees? Again, sometimes there's an over reliance on numbers, instead of just leaning on some of the more qualitative, some of the softer things. And again, it's tough to measure empathy. Sometimes it's tough to measure engagement, even though there's no shortage of studies out there saying that 50% or 80%, or whatever number you want to choose of employees are disengaged. But many of those stops short of explaining what that even means. But behind those numbers, what are the questions that are asked to measure engagement? Because underlying those numbers are probably something more important. And you need to ask yourself, well, what are those numbers? Yes, they might generate some urgency, yes, they might move you forward. But are you over relying on numbers and the words that are coming out of your mouth? And are they beginning to lose muster? Have you been relying on the same talking points and the same metrics and the same numbers for the last, say, decade of your career? Do you need to revisit times where you're not asking yourself? So what? What do these numbers even mean? Does anybody even care? Can we pare it down to maybe one number, maybe two numbers, instead of just throwing statistics out there that, again, are going to cause people's eyes to glaze over because they're inundated with numbers day in and day out? So the question for you related to this question is basically, so what, when you're saying numbers, when numbers are coming out of your mouth, when you're pointing to some sort of dashboard, or some sort of numerical metric as good as it might be? Ask yourself first. So what if you're in the audience's seat, whether it's employees, whether it's investors, whether it's board members, whether it's your colleagues? Ask yourself, so what, what is this number actually show? What is the 1.5 degrees Celsius number actually mean? What does it mean when we say we have seven years, 10 years? 12 years to climate crisis? What does that what are that number actually mean? What are those years actually mean? Because people are asking that question. And if you're not proactively answering what that question is, and helping them understand what those numbers mean, and where they come from, then you're much better off getting rid of most of your numbers, focusing on one number, and then beginning to tie it back to how it actually relates to individual employees, tying it back to their actual role. Otherwise, it's going to be seen as you just simply using numbers to protect some sort of narrative, some sort of story and try to throw out big numbers like the 5989 days that I've been in the oil and gas industry to make it sound like you're you're making more progress than you actually are. Which leads us to the second question today, which is, are you overusing or misusing numbers to protect a narrative? Are you throwing so many numbers out there? Are you just relying on your pupil to give you you know, two or three metrics that tell a good story that are directionally accurate, that are going up, of course, so that you can simply cause people to give up and say, Okay, well, it sounds like you're doing a good job and not dive into it. And again, you're not going to fool investors. Of course, you're not going to fool
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you know, most of the people you're not gonna fool all the people all the time with all of your numbers necessarily. But are you subconsciously thinking that you can, you're subconsciously thinking that you know, one specific number that doesn't really Make a difference. But but sounds big and sounds grand is really going to convince people one way or the other. And again, that's not to say that you can't fool people with some numbers, you can throw big numbers out there, like, a couple months ago for the the recent oil spill or pipeline leakage off the coast of California, where a lot of people pointed out that the headlines, were talking in terms of hundreds of 1000s of gallons of oil, nobody uses gallon of oil to measure things, you know, the conventional term, of course, is barrels. So there was a lot of people, you know, poking holes in the story saying, Well, why not, you know, instead use us ounces? Well, I'm not talking about the the millions of ounces of oil that, you know, came out of that pipeline leak? Again, people ask him those questions people are saying, so what does that even mean? So if you're not thinking in terms of, you know, relative numbers and qualitative numbers, and explaining what it actually means, in real terms, yes, you might be able to convince some people and get their attention for some short amount of time, but it's not sustainable, especially among your workforce, who I'm going to assume is intelligent, they're sharp, and at some point, they're going to look at your numbers that are always going up that are always, you know, seemingly positive. Or conversely, if you're using, you know, negative numbers to help generate urgency, at some point, they're gonna see you as either crying wolf or patting yourself on the back. And either way, they're going to see that as you fueling a narrative that, you know, might not be as strong again, regardless of what side it's on, might not be as strong and as as, as impactful as you're making it out to be. So again, ask yourself, are you misusing numbers? Are you overusing numbers? And are you doing it in a way that is unwittingly protecting some sort of story or some sort of narrative that, again, if you take a step back, might not be as strong as you might think it is? And the final question today is, how much time do you spend helping stakeholders understand their direct connection to the numbers? It's easy to throw numbers out there, it's easy to talk about increases in production growth, or a reduction in safety incidents? Or whatever the case might be? But are you taking the time? And more importantly, are your fellow leaders taking the time or your colleagues taking the time to actually go backwards and reverse engineer those numbers to what it means for an individual? And I say that in terms of two different things, one, how does that actually impact the individual? And one of the easiest ways to do that, of course, with a public company is to look at stock price, right? How does that stock price impact individuals, whether or not they actually have some sort of, you know, direct financial stake, whether or not they have shares in the company, or they have some sort of bonus that's tied to a share price? Or they have some sort of, you know, stock based rewards, even if they don't have that? How is it impacting their bottom line? How is it impacting their pay and the benefits? And how is it impacting the strength and the sustainability of the company so that they can continue to have a job, if you're not helping people understand how those bottom line numbers that you're pointing to actually directly impact them and their own bottom line, we're missing an opportunity to help keep them engaged, to help keep them attentive to the numbers that you're putting out there? And that you're touting publicly and internally. So that's the first piece how are they directly impacted by those numbers. And then the second piece that is often missing is helping them understand how their actions directly impact the bottom line. And, again, it's a it's a fun exercise, and you don't have to over engineer it, you can simply say that, regardless of what your role is in the company, how is it related to the bottom line? And sometimes it might take a little bit of creativity and thought, but obviously, if it's not directed to the directly related to the bottom line in some way, then again, it begs the question, well, what is that person doing their? And even if they're in a role that is simply meant to support and protect operations, and they never touch anything related to money? And it doesn't seem like they're having an impact on the financial numbers? Well,
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my guess is they all hurt, right? From a risk reduction standpoint, if somebody doesn't safety department, there might not be a revenue generation center. But obviously, the cost of one incident can be tremendous. And that can impact the bottom line. And if people don't have that understanding, even if it's just qualitative, and especially if it's qualitative, right? You know, you don't need to over engineer these numbers to throw out something to say, hey, look, you know, you and the safety department, we recognize, you know, you look at all the risks, you have a 5% impact, say, on the bottom line of the company, you know, that stock price has a 5% dependence on you doing your job and preventing incidents that open us up to liability that threaten our social licence to operate. Yeah, could that number be simply pulled out of thin air perhaps, but at least if you can quantify the perhaps difficult to quantify or unquantifiable, you can, at least, you know, bring people on board and you can generate a number that is meaningful to them, unlike the dozens of numbers that you might be throwing at them that aren't as meaningful, that aren't as impactful that are that are again, overwhelming at times. So take some time today to think about how you can quantify the unquantifiable. And again, this is a fun exercise for people, especially people with career transition who are entertaining different jobs or different industries and you know, it's Point. It's not just about, of course, you know, salary and bonuses and cost of living and things like that, but it's also quantifying the unquantifiable. The, you know, the psychological benefits of one job over another the intangible benefits the, the the time benefits, of course, and putting some numbers to that that are meaningful for them, that actually can resonate for them that they can look at. So go that other direction as much as I told you to, to run away from numbers or to at least question whether you're overusing numbers and the first 15 minutes of this discussion. I'm also asking you from a sustainability standpoint to make sure that you're taking the time to generate new numbers, even if they're not as supportable. Even if they kind of make you cringe if you're an accountant minded individual, or an engineering minded individual who, who really is, is uncomfortable with the idea of generalized numbers that aren't exactly fully supportable. I'm encouraging you to take the time here to try to quantify the unquantifiable so that you can generate a number that helps people understand how they're connected to the ultimate numbers to the big number, whether it's the 1.5 degrees Celsius number that's out there that is driving all of the conversations at at recent comp meetings, and certainly cop 26. Or, again, whether it's the stock price number of your company, or whether it's a headcount number, whatever the case might be, ask yourself, how you can show people how they are directly connected to and impacted by the numbers that are most important. And that being said, I appreciate the 16 minutes and 24 seconds so far that you spent listening to this conversation. Again, I encourage you as you go into your weekend to take a break at times from the overwhelming number of numbers out there and ask yourself, what is the core objective you're working towards? And what is one number one number that best captures your progress towards that goal. So that being said, I appreciate you tuning in today. I appreciate those of you who have engaged over the last 36 episodes of the energy detox, I appreciate those of you who have engaged over the last 15 daily episodes of the energy detox. And as always, I welcome your feedback, your comments, your criticism, including some recent feedback Yesterday I received from somebody who said that I seem to have difficulty saying goodbye. That seemed like a higher percentage of my time is spent on the last two minutes of an episode. Instead of trying to just crisply wrap things up. And to that person who provided that feedback. I say thank you, I say thank you. Again, I am filled with gratitude. And I appreciate everything that you did to share with me and I am so willing to even take an extra 30 or 40 seconds to thank you for that feedback. As as much as I'm unable to say a quick goodbye. But in all seriousness, and with sincere gratitude. I hope you have an excellent weekend. I thank you again for your time and attention. And I hope you continue enjoying these renditions of the daily detox