It’s common for managers to spend an awful lot of time trying to want results into existence.
Revenue. Margin. Attach rate. Productivity. Customer satisfaction.
We set goals around them. Build dashboards to track them. Celebrate when they move and turn up the pressure when they don’t.
But those are just results—the outcomes. They sit to the right of the equal sign.
And results are a destination, not a map. Like driving a car, setting the destination doesn’t get you there. You still have to drive it.
Importantly, just like any math equation, the work that produces the answer happens on the left.
People. Product. Process. Experience. Belief. Action.
Years ago, I was introduced to a simple framework called the Change Pyramid that put structure around that idea:
EXPERIENCES → BELIEFS → ACTIONS → RESULTS
Experiences drive beliefs. Beliefs create actions. Actions produce results.
Once I learned it, I began to put it to work repeatedly across my career.
One memorable opportunity came while I was helping build a national program between an audio company and one of the country’s largest satellite providers.
The opportunity was hand in glove. Thousands of technicians were already entering customers’ homes every day installing premium video systems. And top-shelf video deserves top-shelf audio. Better audio completed the immersive entertainment experience. The product fit. The customer was already there. The opportunity was enormous.
The results were encouraging, but there was a large gap in participation. Some offices were running away with it while others were stuck leaving the gate.
Even more eye-opening was what we saw on the front lines. The same anomaly was happening among technicians inside the same office. Some were finding success while others simply weren’t taking the bat off their shoulders.
That was a problem.
Field leaders were reporting that technicians were pushing back on the shift toward sales, and a disconnect was growing between what the organization wanted and what technicians believed their job was.
The reactions became increasingly punitive. Field leaders did what felt natural. They doubled and tripled down on the goals and their expectations.
Sell more. Hit the number. Improve your performance. And if you don’t, there are consequences.
The proverbial 💩 was rolling down the hill, and the messaging wasn’t consistent or as effective as intended when it was landing with the techs. The stick was quickly outgrowing the carrot.
I wanted to understand what was happening in the field.
So, I got in the van.
On one particular ride-along, I was paired with a technician whose performance was well below both his office and the national averages. But he wasn’t struggling. He was protesting. His performance had been discussed. His job had been discussed. The consequences had been discussed. He understood exactly what management wanted, but he was pissed and he just wasn’t going to do it.
At the first house, he wouldn’t even carry the demo bag in. I carried it.
That’s when I learned how he’d gotten there. The first couple of times he tried, he struggled pairing the soundbar and subwoofer so he couldn’t execute a clean demo. Customers said “No”.
Those “No’s” left a scar.
His relationship to the goal and his supervisor didn’t make it better. By the time I climbed into his van, he was dug in and had his shield up.
So, rather than tell him one more time what he needed to do, I put the pyramid to work and started asking questions. Questions can be the catalyst for change. I traded in some of my periods and exclamation points for question marks. This kept me out of the trap of speaking at him and into understanding through asking and listening to him. I asked him what he thought about the speakers built into flat-panel TVs. Were they any good? Did he think we were trying to sell customers something they didn’t need, or did better audio genuinely improve the viewing experience?
He didn’t hesitate. Of course, better audio improved the experience. That mattered. He believed in the why. He just didn’t excel at the how. We worked on how simple it could be. What to say, and more importantly, what he didn’t have to say.
Let the bar do the work. Let the customer hear the difference between the TV and the soundbar. Toggle them. Let them experience it.
No pitch may be the best pitch.
He just needed a little help jumping off the diving board.
When we got to the next customer’s house, we went in and he got the installation we were called to do going. Then it was time to demo the bar.
He did great. He set it up, turned it on and let the customer hear the difference between the TV and the soundbar. No sales pitch. No stress.
The last thing he had to do was ask for the sale. And just as we had practiced, he asked, “Do you want me to leave this one set up for you?”
Instant “Yes”. The customer loved it.
When we got back in the van, there were high fives, smiles and pounding on the steering wheel. His frustration was gone. More importantly, he wanted to get to the next house.
Looks like YES can leave a scar too.
Same technician. Same product. Same opportunity. Same goal. Different experience. Different results.
The experience changed his beliefs. His beliefs changed his actions. His actions created the result we were looking for.
His win was bigger than one sale. It gave us back the pyramid lesson.
To scale its success across the enterprise, we needed to change the field leaders’ experience.
The goal just revealed the mission.
We took the lesson wider by coaching the coaches. We rolled out more technician training and a program to help field leaders better coach their crews—how to ask more questions, understand what was getting in the way, and resist the “or else” impulse whenever possible.
Now we were changing the leaders’ experience too.
We weren’t lowering the expectation. We were changing how we helped people reach it.
Employee turnover is expensive. Disconnected work environments are expensive. Missed goals and poor results are expensive.
Change didn’t cost us anything.
Turn it up!