Success is Never Guaranteed

I participated in a workshop today and learned something new about what work actually implies for the meaning of quality and how it can be perceived.

The speaker distinguished three notable layers:

• Performance – This describes how an employee behaves and tackles certain tasks. It answers the "how".
• Result – This describes what the actual outcome of the performed work was. It answers the "what".
• Success – This describes how a given result is perceived.

The most interesting learning for me was that, despite something being performed well and the results being good, it can still be perceived as unsuccessful. So the most important factor which is needed here that success can be seen as success is connectivity. If a stakeholder can connect to the result professionally and understands the efforts, only then is it possible to even perceive something as successful or not. If the connectivity is missing, then there is no way to reach that point.