This past weekend I had the arduous task of taking apart a wooden play set in my yard. Dismantling the boards and pulling hundreds of nails got me thinking about effort, activity, and outcomes.

At one point, I had to remove the swing hangers. The hangers are long bolts that run through a cross beam and are secured at the top by a nut. There is a metal cover over each of the hangers. Four nails secure the cover. To remove the hanger, you must first remove the cover to access the nut.

As I was prying up the cover, I realized something. I didn’t have to remove all four nails. I simply had to remove two nails and bend it back. My outcome wasn’t to remove the cover – that was an interim step. My outcome was to expose the nut in order to remove it (actually, my outcome was to remove the hanger – removing the nut was the most efficient way to do that).

Removing all four nails would have been over-acting relative to my outcome. In this case, over-acting had little cost other than maybe some nicked fingers and sore muscles. In a work setting over acting can cost time or money – resources that are a lot scarcer these days.

It made me wonder how often we over-act. I see it happen a lot. We lose sight of the outcome and continue to focus on executing the activities associated with it.

Misguided metrics are a major source of over-acting. When metrics are focused solely on activity, it’s no surprise that they generate a lot of activity. Without over-arching outcome measures, activity metrics can easily lead down a path of perpetual motion with little progress.

Bottom-up reporting, diagnosing, and communicating are a second major source of over-acting. Bottom-up means starting with the activity metrics and working your way to the outcome measures. This type of approach probably results from our being used to thinking about our world in a linear, cause-effect manner. We tend to measure, report, and communicate what is happening in the order that it happens. That’s not effective from a management point of view. The first and foremost area of focus should be the outcome. That drives your actions.

Lack of clarity is the third major source of over-acting. Too often, leaders are at a loss to define the end game clearly. Instead, they take the easier route. They define activities that can easily be measured and reported. Sometimes organizations bring me in when they believe they are having a performance problem. My first question is always the same – what outcomes are not being met. I’m amazed at the blank looks I get when I ask that question. The response is usually, “Can’t you just look around and see what is and is not working?” The answer is no. I can look around, that’s easy. But, I can’t tell what is or isn’t working. If the organization is shooting for 4.5 out of 5 on customer satisfaction, then its processes are working if satisfaction is at 4.6. They are broken if satisfaction is at 4.3. Without knowing the end game, the exercise in finding problems also becomes an activity. All people and processes CAN be improved. The question is whether they SHOULD be improved. You can only answer that by understanding what you are trying to achieve.

Take a look around. Talk to your people. Find out how they determine when enough is enough. Is it the completion of an activity or the achievement of an outcome?

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Brad Kolar is the President of Kolar Associates, a leadership consulting and workforce productivity consulting firm. He can be reached at brad.kolar@kolarassociates.com.