Are You in the Gap? Or the Gain?

Glass Half-Empty vs. Glass Half-Full

“The gap”, as its name suggests, is focusing on what’s missing. On what you don’t have yet.

When you’re in the gap, you’re measuring yourself against standards that are external, including so-called industry standards. Standards created by someone else’s experience.

In the gap, you’re focusing on how far you and your team are falling short in reaching these standards. It’s a negative focus: “What is missing? What are we doing wrong?”

It’s a glass half-empty mentality.

On the other hand, when you’re in the gain your focus is on your success. You do this by measuring backwards to where you started and seeing how far you’ve come from there. Instead of measuring yourself by someone else’s thresholds, you’re using your own historical performance as a reference.

Putting It into Context

Let’s go back to the example we were looking at earlier.

Let’s say that the 85th percentile of your cycle time points to 12 days. Don’t beat yourself up if you haven’t hit your 5-day threshold just yet. Don’t stay in the gap. Instead, look back at your past performance.

If 3 months earlier, it pointed at 56 days. That means that within 3 months, your cycle time has gone down to less than a fourth of what it was originally. In that case, I’d say you’re doing fantastic.

Here’s the thing:

As long as you understand why your cycle time is moving over time, you’re in a good place. You should only be worried if your delivery time is changing and you don’t know the reason why.

You need perspective when you evaluate your cycle time. It won’t make sense otherwise.

When it comes to measuring your cycle time to see whether your improvement efforts are paying off, the only thing that makes sense is to look back on your own data.

If you do need a threshold, you need to look to your own past performance – not someone else’s.

Look at your previous cycle time 3 months, 6 months into the past and compare it to how you’re doing now. Look at the numbers. How have the trends built over time? Is your cycle time going up? Going down? Staying consistent?

Those numbers will give you the answer you need. They will tell if you’ve headed in the right direction.

Breaking Down the Paradox

Now, you might say, “Sonya, if I don’t measure my team’s success against where we fall short, we won’t be able to identify ways to improve. We won’t grow – at least, not enough to meet our potential.”

First of all, I understand where you’re coming from. I used to think the same way. A lot of people (maybe most) do. It’s natural to think you’ve got to push yourself that extra step or you’ll get complacent about your results.

But I would ask you this: When you focus on the 5 days you haven’t reached versus those 44 days of improvement you’ve achieved, how do you feel?

Do you feel proud of what you’ve accomplished, or do you feel drained and inadequate?

Do you feel productive and confident, or do you feel pressure from not being good enough and having to do a “better” job next time?

When you’re in the gap, it’s hard not to be demoralized to some degree because the focus is negative: it’s all about what you’re not doing, but need to.

But when you choose to be in the gain, it’s like flipping a switch that takes you from night to day.

Instead of thinking, “we failed to reach our goal again, we have to try harder next time,” you start to realize, “look how far we’ve come. Look what we’ve gained. We went from a total lack of predictability to a consistent pace in 85% of the cases. Look at that. That’s amazing.”

It’s all about perspective.

It’s easier to make new goals and do great work when you measure your results by where you are today compared to yesterday, instead of measuring yourself based on failure.

There’s definitely a fine line between the gap and the gain. It can be easy to confuse “identifying opportunities” with “focusing on your flaws,” and as a result find yourself getting sucked back into the gap. It still happens to me from time to time.

And it’s okay to acknowledge where you fall short, or that you’re discouraged because you didn’t reach that goal you hoped you would. In fact, that’s a necessary part of the process.