How even the most famous executives hand success to the competition

Roger Federer at Wimbledon (Photo: Wikimedia)

In our household, the end of June means the Wimbledon Tennis Championships. My wife watches progress on the television. My interest is, at best, lukewarm. But I am always struck by an area of correspondence between tennis and organizational life: the extent to which the outcome of the competition is decided by the number of unforced errors.

It is not always the best player who wins the match or the tournament. Sometimes a relative unknown seems inspired, while the established champion appears lack-luster and awkward. When someone is playing well, he or she makes few unforced errors. When they have a bad day, the number increases rapidly. Even during a match, some small lapse of concentration often leads to a series of unforced errors that can lose that player valuable points.

In tennis, an unforced error is a mistake or bad shot made by a player without any reason other than his or her lack of skill or composure. Serving a double fault is an example. The point is lost, though the opponent never touched the ball. The player who does this too often will lose the match, even if their opponent plays no better than competently. When a champion loses to a weaker opponent, it is often because the champion has made enough unforced errors to lose, not because their opponent has played well enough to win.

Forced errors occur only for one reason: your opponent is playing better than you are. Their superior skill, speed or tactical sense puts pressure on you that causes mistakes. To translate this to the business world, forced errors occur when the competition has a better business model, better product, better service or better strategy. They outplay you. As you struggle to keep up, you make even more mistakes because of the extra pressure.

Unforced errors are the ones you make regardless of the actions or skill of your competition. They’re the ones that result from taking too many risks, trying to do things too quickly, cutting costs to the point where you harm your own prospects, focusing on short-term wins and ignoring the consequences, and sticking to old habits when external circumstances have already changed enough to make them useless.

Throwing away your advantages

The management even of struggling businesses is typically made up of able, intelligent and hard-working people. There may be a few fools and incompetents, but they are the minority in business as everywhere else. What destroys a business is an able majority making enough unforced errors to give the competition a free run.

What do unforced errors look like? Examples include interdepartmental rivalries that consume valuable time, attention and resources. Top management that is dictatorial and over-controlling, focused on personalities and egos rather than making the business work. Bright people who fail to perform as they should, because they’re poorly motivated and badly led. Structures and processes that are out of alignment with corporate strategy and the demands of the market, usually as the result of past history and current inertia. Even the most capable leaders sometimes suffer from the tendency to trust in what has worked before, even when it’s obvious that it’s not working this time. Stuck in their habits, they miss the signs of change, misinterpret essential information, and regard stubborn adherence to past precedent as determination and courage. If something isn’t working, the only rational course of action is to do something different, not reinterpret reality to explain why it ought to work.

Misaligned thinking produces unforced errors in droves

Many organizational strategies turn out to be the very things that keep problems frozen in place; especially when those strategies include actions that appear to contradict the fine words leaders use. Examples include:

• Deficit thinking (focusing on what is missing or inadequate) while telling people to focus on innovation.
• Using command and control approaches to try to bring about greater empowerment.
• Using ‘us ‘versus them’ thinking to break down barriers to co-operation.
• Treating people as interchangeable machines, while talking about individual ability.
• Rewarding competitive, individualistic and political behavior while asking for co-operation, team working and loyalty.
• Protecting top executive privilege while expecting other employees to accept job insecurity, static incomes and working excessive hours ‘for the good of the business’.
• Demanding unquestioning employee commitment to the organization, while the organization has zero commitment to the employee (witness the rush to hand out pink slips as instant response to bad times).
• Using performance appraisals, supposed to help people understand what to do and how to do it better, as the basis for allocating rewards and punishments: a system designed to assist growth turned into a tool to enforce management demands.

How to avoid unforced errors

The first and most obvious step is to slow down. Haste, cutting corners and allowing insufficient time to think virtually ensure that you will make unnecessary mistakes. Preventing unforced errors demands steps based on the opposite of today’s generally-accepted managerial wisdom.

The most successful businesses emphasize consistent long-term performance over quick wins (and long-term losses). They see research, development and innovation as insurance against an unknown future, not as a cost to be minimized. They retain key employees with long-term rewards (development, security, personal growth) not short-term ones (bonuses, stock options). They favor idealism over pragmatism (more innovative, more inspiring, more motivating). They value positive emotions and encourage people to find where they fit best and enjoy work most. A group of free people, acting together out of choice and shared beliefs, will always outperform pressed labor and economic slaves.

How many unforced errors are you and your people making? Do you know? Might they be enough to cost you the success you would otherwise have achieved? Only by slowing down, paying careful attention and investigating the alignment between what you say you want and what you do to get it can you find the answers.

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