“Never mistake motion for action.”
- Ernest Hemingway.
I recollected this excellent quote when I was trying to make sense of a team member’s behavior and work output, when we worked together some time back. Let’s call him Anup. Anup seemed to have a particularly laidback attitude, and used to follow the maxim - “I will do as told to, not an inch more”. Furious hand-wringing on my side (when I was alone), repeated in-person advice (albeit, given softly) and other techniques were not working. And he was the only team member who was displaying these traits.
I just couldn’t figure out what to do with Anup. I had made up my mind to transfer him out to another team where he might find better working opportunities.
Then it came to me.
Anup was mistaking motion for action. Every time, I asked him about the work on a particular module, he would list something on these lines:
“I completed creating the spreadsheet.”
“I looked at the data for 10 companies.”
“There is a lot of data. I will need time to complete it.”
I was always asking him for a deadline for his activities. And every time, it was the same story - some or the other problem had come up, and in dealing with that, the module had not been completed. It was difficult for me to accept this, considering that almost all the others on the team were delivering excellent work, and had our overall goals in sight.
On the contrary, Anup was of the belief that he was busy all the time and had too much on his plate.
One day, I sat him down, and asked him about what he had done in the last 2 months. He started off again. This time, I asked him - “This is what you have done. But did we finish the module?”
His response after a painful few seconds - No.
I think he himself understood that day, that he was mistaking motion for action. Activities for results. Being busy while accomplishing nothing in fact. Well, even I had this problem once, and I still keep having it on some problem or the other. Only this time, I take a step back and try to correct it.
And Anup did show an improvement in the next quarter. Although I did have him transferred to another role, because that’s where I thought he would bring more value to the table. I hear he is doing well there.
So, my point being, if you are facing such problems with any team mates, there might be a chance that this is the actual problem.
Note: Steve Blank first wrote a piece on “motion vs action” way back in 2009. I will leave you with an excerpt from his article.
“This was my (Steve Blank’s) fault. It had taken me (Steve Blank) almost two months to realize that other people didn’t see the world the same way I did.”
“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.”
“Jim (someone similar to Anup in my story) was following a different path. Focused on the process, Jim defined progress as moving through a step on his to-do list, and feeling like progress was being made when he checked them off. The problem was his approach let others define the outcome and set the pace.”