By Cheryl Detrick Founder & Strategic Navigator, Detrick Strategy
John Wooden famously said, “Don’t mistake activity for achievement. To produce results, tasks must be well organized and properly executed; otherwise, it’s no different from children running around the playground—everybody is doing something, but nothing is being done; lots of activity, no achievement.” Effort is not progress, it only matters if it is directed at the right activity. Measuring activity is easy; measuring whether we are actually advancing is harder.
In this, the final point of the Detrick Compass, we reach Measure. Measure is closely connected with Navigate. In Design, you identified the order, dependencies, next meaningful steps, and success points and now Measure returns to those and asks, “Are we where we said we needed to be?”
Successful measurement cannot and should not be bolted on later; the foundation for quality measures is created during Design. You establish the critical path in Design, then Measure against that—*not* against your activity.
When you are looking at your progress and find you’re off track, diagnose why first before assigning blame. Many leaders, if the team is not where they expected it to be, will immediately conclude their people are not working hard enough. Don’t do it.
Look at your Design and ask whether they are doing the right work, whether they have the proper tools, resources, capability, and conditions. If they need to screw things together and you have issued everyone a hammer, asking them to swing harder will not solve the problem. Diagnose the problem before you blame the worker.
You must be willing to let the plan be wrong.
Leaders become attached to plans because they designed, funded, defended, and communicated them. Look for obvious human, capacity, performance, or culture issues. If those do not explain the gap, examine the plan itself. Do not protect the plan from the evidence. A good measurement system is not there to prove the plan worked. It is there to tell you whether it did.
Let’s say you have done a good evaluation of status and have decided your Design is still good. Your people have what they need, but the measurements either are not being hit or something just feels off. How do you know whether to stay the course? Look at three things, not in isolation, but together. Are we making meaningful progress? What are our humans telling us? What is our gut telling us?
No single answer should dominate, though I will tell you I tend to default to my gut. But when the signals conflict, get curious rather than immediately changing course or doubling down on the current plan. Getting curious has been a game-changer for me.
Sometimes the lag is not in execution, it is in transformation. You cannot expect new results from an organization still thinking in the old way. Staff may be doing new things with old thinking—new process, old assumptions; new tools layered onto old methodology. Do a deep dive and discover whether the transformation has actually occurred psychologically, emotionally, and behaviorally. Measure is not only checking outcomes, but identifying if decisions, behavior, collaboration, and culture are actually changing.
Remember those difficult conversations you had (or may not have had) during Align? Those can resurface during Measure. You may have left someone in the wrong seat, or a known performance or culture issue may never have been fully resolved. Sometimes, even when the difficult decision was made and someone is no longer on the payroll, their influence may remain through relationships, informal networks, or the community grapevine. Leadership may not be able to fix or control that influence, but must recognize it as part of the environment. Remind yourself often - not every barrier is yours to remove, some are simply yours to understand.
Most problems can be handled through Navigate by adjusting the route, tools, sequence, pace, or resources; but sometimes you hit a sandbar that blocks the whole river. Sometimes the right course correction is to leave the course. You can’t dig it out and can’t go around it, so you have to take the boat out, carry it around the obstacle, and relaunch downstream — because downstream is still where we have to go.
Think back to Navigate when we said reality gets a vote? In fact, reality may require a completely new path and Measure can send you back to Design. In that situation, the objective is not to successfully execute the original route - the objective is to get to True North.
Measure makes clear that the Detrick Compass is not a linear series of six steps. It can send leaders back wherever the evidence says leadership work is needed:
- Orient if reality or the environment has changed.
- Envision if the destination needs reconsideration.
- Design if the route no longer works.
- Align if people, resources, ownership, or commitments are off.
- Navigate if the plan is sound but execution needs adjustment.
The Compass is not six steps to complete. It is a framework for determining what leadership work is required next.
Getting to True North is a journey - not a path. It may also be linear, cyclical, backward, sideways, or completely rerouted. It may be all of those at different points. The shape of the journey will change. True North remains the goal. Keep True North in sight and use the Compass to determine what comes next.
Measure is the capstone because it reveals what the Compass actually is: a framework leaders keep in their hands throughout the work.
Next, we head into the garden, where I’ll share what I have learned about leadership and life from a season of planting and growing.
In the meantime, have a thought, question, or perspective this raised for you? I’d love to hear it.
If you are reading this article and the rest of the Detrick Compass™ framework series, explore The Birth of the Detrick Compass™ , First, We Orient; Envision, A Future Worth Choosing, and Design, Now We are Making It Real, Go or No-Go, Align Time, and The Plan Meets Reality: Navigate!