Tom Brady. Photo: Getty Images
Everyone, no matter how successful, starts somewhere.
Take Tom Brady. (The following is from Greg Harden’s book Stay Sane in an Insane World, Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic podcast, and Billy Oppenheimer’s newsletter.)
As a freshman at the University of Michigan he was seventh on the depth chart. The first time he actually played in a game, his first pass was intercepted for a touchdown.
As a sophomore, he was still such an afterthought he only got two reps per practice. Frustrated and demoralized, he considered transferring to another school. First, though, he talked to coach Lloyd Carr.
“The other quarterbacks get all the reps,” Brady complained.
“Stop worrying about what all the other players on our team are doing,” Carr replied. “All you do is worry about what the starter is doing, what the second guy is doing, what everyone else is doing. You don’t worry about what you’re doing.”
“You came here to be the best,” Carr said. “If you’re going to be the best, you have to beat out the best.”
Brady then met with Michigan sports psychologist Greg Harden. “I’m never going to get my chance (to prove myself),” Brady said. “They’re only giving me two reps.”
“Just go out there and focus on doing the best you can with those two reps,” Harden said. “Make them as perfect as you possibly can.”
So that’s what Brady did. He sprinted onto the field for his two reps with as much enthusiasm, energy, and focus as possible. Soon two reps became four, and then six. Then 10.
As Brady says:
Before I knew it, with this new mindset that Greg instilled in me — to focus on what you can control, to focus on what you’re getting, not what anyone else is getting, to treat every rep like it’s the Super Bowl — eventually, I became the starter.
Science backs up his approach. Deep, deliberate practice — a form of training that involves concentration, effort, and a steady stream of critical feedback — can help improve any skill up to 10 times faster than conventional practice.
Practice with that level of focus and your brain forms myelin, a microscopic neural substance that adds considerable speed and accuracy to thoughts and movement. Myelin is kind of like a muscle, except instead of strengthening your body, it strengthens neural pathways related to a particular skill.
By giving his all to whatever reps he did get, Brady set the stage for improvement.
But then there’s this.
Most entrepreneurs focus on measuring results and outcomes. Want to know your revenue for the month? Add up your sales. Want to know your safety record for the month? Easy: Add up your recordable accidents. Want to be the starting quarterback? Look at the depth chart.
The problem is, results are lag metrics. They show what happened. Lag metrics are easy to set. And simple to track. But they’re much less useful in terms of influencing — much less predicting — the future.
That’s where lead metrics come in. Lead metrics are predictive of achieving a long-term goal:
Want to grow your sales? Focus on lead metrics like the number of sales calls you make. The number of leads you generate. The number of referrals you request. Want to improve safety? Focus on lead metrics, like wearing safety equipment. Enforcing lock-out/tag-out procedures. Holding regular safety meetings. Want to be the starting quarterback? Focus on doing the best you can with whatever practice reps you get. Make them as perfect as you possibly can.
Lag metrics tell you what you want to happen. Lead metrics lay out how you will get there. The beauty of lead metrics is that they are reasonably predictive: Do the work, and you will achieve some level of success.
That makes lead metrics much more important than lag metrics, because doing the work, day after day, is the only way that success will follow.
Try it. Pick a goal. Pick a lag metric. Then reverse-engineer the lead metrics that will get you there.
If you want to hit $20,000 in sales per month, use your current results to determine how many additional leads and sales calls you need to generate and make. Then create a daily process, and commit to checking off the boxes on your calendar.
If you want to improve safety, focus on lead metrics that predict success: mandatory equipment. Refresher training. Even how long it takes a manager to respond to an accident report, since a rapid response indicates a commitment to finding and eliminating root causes. Then track those lead metrics, because they give you a much better chance of hitting your lag metric.
If your lag metric is becoming the starting quarterback, focus on a lead metric that predicts success. Crushing every rep you get. Studying more film. Staying after practice to put in more work. Treat every rep like it’s the Super Bowl.
Lag metrics can only tell you where you are. Lead metrics tell you how to get to where you want to be. Choose lead metrics that predict success, and then track your performance to those metrics.
Because success is achieved only by doing the right things, day after day after day.
And not worrying about what anyone else is doing or getting.
