Make a New Name

Bryan

If you are new to Examining Competence, welcome! I suggest you start from the beginning of the series.

I’ve learned about precision and accuracy in two very different contexts. First was in high school Physics. That’s where this important science concept registered. Results can be tightly-grouped (precise) but nowhere near what’s expected or wanted, or they can be scattered in the right part of the graph (accurate) but not near each other. The ideal is precise and accurate. Results in a tight group in the predicted area. Low deviation. Much later in life I learned the same thing again in martial arts, and particularly while learning to shoot. A tight group at the edge of the paper is one problem to troubleshoot, a disjointed scattering around the middle is a different problem.  

Both concepts are important. But neither is helpful without the other. Their lessons are different.

I’m going to talk with you today about someone who has both accuracy and precision, and how both weave into the idea of Competence.

When I considered who would be best able to illustrate the skills of precision and accuracy, I very much didn’t want to use Bryan (not the same Bryan as the last article). I felt it would be too obvious, too easy, too “on the nose.” Because Bryan served as a Marine sniper. “Oh gee, really, is Bryan accurate and precise? Duh.” But the longer I considered, really thinking about these attributes, the more it became clear he’s embodied them through his life. His ability to be precise and accurate with a rifle is no more or less than an outgrowth of this essential part of his nature. No one else I know could reflect the ideas so effectively.

Let’s talk about accuracy first. Most of us tend to strength in one or the other (if either) and for me that’s accuracy. Accuracy is about being goal oriented. You hear “goal oriented” all the time. But break the words down. Lots of folks have goals. Organizations have goals. Teams have goals. People do things. Organizations do things. Teams do things. Maybe the “things” move you closer to your goal over time, maybe they don’t. You may achieve things you didn’t intend, but if you achieve a planned goal then accuracy describes what you did to get there.

Being “accurate,” or “goal oriented,” means a consciousness of the goal that pervades all activity. 

Actions may be lateral to the goal. Mostly we don’t expend all of our energy and resources toward a single thing. But if actions take you farther from a goal, that has to be a strategic decision. A team falling back to get the ball to someone with a better chance to run it in. An organization taking a year to make tactical adjustments or reorganize to be better prepared to achieve the goal. A person spending time and money on a vacation to be rested and prepared to work toward their goal.

That may all seem roundabout if you’re thinking “but isn’t accuracy and precision about dots on a graph, or holes in a shooting target?” Accuracy just means most of the dots or holes in the right general part of the paper, right? 

Accuracy is the word we use when we evaluate the results of work toward goals. To be “accurate” means being goal-oriented while the effort happens. 

But let me also shift to analogy. You’re in a pool, and you want to get a ball to the other end of it. The least efficient way is to shove it through the water. You can focus on a goal all you want, but the environment is not going to help you get that ball there. 

When I was learning to use a sword, trying to get the pointy part to hit a small thing, I was given the advice “don’t push the sword, let the target [goal] pull the sword toward it.” Which is exactly the kind of infuriating nonsense you get from martial arts instructors. Patently the sword is not “pulling” anything. If the point goes into something it’s because you pushed the sword (or maybe dropped it).

For a long time, it remained infuriating nonsense to me. Until eventually one day I realized that when I’m “in the zone” with a sword, that is precisely how it feels. As if the sword is being sucked through the air to the target, and I’m just following along. I couldn’t make it feel that way. You can’t shove a sword at a target with a hyper focus and expect to succeed. When you feel as if you’re pushing the sword, it goes anywhere other than where you want it. When accuracy is happening, there’s a feeling. Like the goal (sword, paper target, major organizational project, any goal) is pulling you toward it. And the results show it. 

When you look at a project completion and say “it’s accurate” you are describing results of accurate activity. That activity, that mindset, means having a constant sense of what actions will pull you to the goal, and what actions will not. In the pool, it’s efficient swimming in the right direction with the ball until you get where you want it to be, not thrashing or pushing the ball. Maybe it’s a game, and you have to get past other swimmers. Maybe you’re hiding the ball, or pulling it along. You swim sideways, underwater, you might stop, jump, even pass the ball, but your mind is on the goal. Your swimming takes the ball and the objective into account no matter what’s happening at any moment.

When we talk about Competent people, goals are often long-term and complicated. It’s not walking onto a shooting range and sending some lead into paper. It’s everything that goes into success. Maybe it’s setting up projects that could take years to complete. It could be massive shifts in organizational culture. Or shepherding resources with no visible progress for long periods of time. People who succeed, or get an organization to succeed at big goals are ones with lots of Competence attributes.

If you’ve been reading since the beginning, you’ll remember descriptions of Competence and you’ll know that Competent people do the hard stuff. In that context, “goal orientation” means doing small actions over long time periods, always with the goal in mind. Knowing where all of those moving pieces are, and keeping them moving. This is where people with these qualities really shine.

All of that goes to what I mean by “accurate” in the sense of Competence. 

Precision is not my favorite. In shooting terms, sign me up for shotgun. Scattershot force that overwhelms the goal. But because I’ve had to study precision, outside of my comfort, I have a lot of observations of it to share. Some of that learning came from watching Bryan. I’ll describe what I’ve picked up, but consult an actual expert if the topic of precision interests you beyond what I have to say. 

Precision is about “grouping.” A single data point might be accurate, but you have no way of knowing if you’ve achieved precision until you have more of them. It’s “sure, you can do it once, but can you do it a lot?” My favorite awesome example is in archery movie scenes where the archer splits their last arrow. (Usually a bullseye, because that kind of archer is accurate as well as precise.)

In organizational terms, thinking again about goals, you want a project manager who can hit the mark on almost every project. A one-hit-wonder doesn’t do it. One with too much variation in cost or resource estimates creates havoc. To achieve long-term complicated goals you have to nail each milestone on the way to the end goal. Milestones are all little goals. A precise PM will hit your milestones closely enough to keep the whole project moving. An accurate PM might get you to your goal but the milestones might have been a rough ride, over budget, over time. An accurate AND precise PM hit those milestones and the final goal was never in serious question.

Precision is about managing internal and external factors to reduce the effects that will wobble your action off the mark. In long-distance shooting, I’m told, that’s considering where you are in relation to the target, wind, projectile velocity, it’s your internal mindset, it’s your breathing. In sports it’s about practicing so many times that your body knows precisely where you are in space, your muscles know how to move precisely every time. In life, it means managing effects constantly. Juggling resources and environmental change. It means trying and achieving progressively larger goals to build up strength and ability.

Precision and accuracy have another meaning in communication. The same thing in a different context. When conveying information you can do it by throwing words at someone, or you can be drawn by their need for the information. You can carefully select words to create exactly the right meaning in your receiver’s mind (accuracy) without also creating unintended meaning (precision). 

Today’s lesson is “Competent people are accurate and precise” but It’s not enough to say that. Accuracy and precision measure the effects of other skills working in concert. In the same way that you look at results and say “that person is competent” (or “Competent.) Until you see results, you have no idea whether someone has achieved accuracy, and until you see multiple results, their precision is unknown. But I think those words describe coordination of underlying skills, but are also traits in and of themselves. I think some people really are “accurate” and “precise” in the sense that they are goal-oriented and achieve goals consistently.

Let’s talk about Bryan! 

I’ve known him for maybe thirteen years. He’s a fair bit younger than I am. Now, Bryan is the owner of his own martial arts school, opened more than five years ago (open for a couple of years before the pandemic, and still running). When I first really got to know him, he was just leaving the Marines and joining the school where I was training.

Brian’s goal, since childhood, was to run a martial arts school of his own. To be a teacher of the thing he loves to do, and do it in his own business, his own way. That’s not unusual for kids and teenagers (and even adults) who study martial arts. At some point you think “should I open a school?” Often for remarkably wrong reasons. Or out of a passion for the art that burns out. Or people start a school too soon, or badly, and it fails, or their energy fails, or they find out they had a bad idea of what running a school means. Or they decide to do it, and never do. Lots of people have big goals, few achieve them, and extremely few build anything durable out of a childhood wish.

For Bryan, “Goal oriented” (what I’m calling accuracy) meant training with his teachers relentlessly while growing up. Through difficult times and easy. Helping in their school, practicing, becoming as good as he could be. Lots of people, especially kids, who start out training enthusiastically become bored and give up. So even while young, by some accounts less-than-disciplined, Bryan had some capacity to keep a goal in mind. Latching on to it and doing things to make it a reality even when presented with lots of other ways to spend time. That is a trait some people have, and others less so. As I’ve said with all of the traits that make up Competence, I believe it can be learned. But whether people like Bryan learned it in some way as children, or just came with it built in, I can’t speculate.

One difference between Competence and people who just bulldoze toward a goal, is a sense for what it takes to really accomplish something. To visualize what success means, and take a world of factors into account to achieve it. Being drawn, rather than pushing. Fitting into the flow, or deciding how the world will work and trying to force that.

Lots of people start martial arts schools in a garage (or barn) or by teaching classes at a YMCA or community center. It’s possible to jump right in with little cost, no knowledge, and less skill. That’s what some people in young Bryan’s shoes do. They’re in a hurry to get off on their own, learn while doing, so they usually disregard sager advice and just jump in with both feet. Opening a school while brains are still mush is a recipe for having three students and either failing or having a “school” that meets once or twice a week. Working an unrelated full-time job to “run a school” a couple of classes a week. 

Bryan had a bit of fire in his belly, but also rare wisdom (early signs of Competence) to know he needed a whole lot of personal attributes, experience, and skills to be a really effective teacher and owner of a business that doesn’t fold in a year. He didn’t go the early-failure route that might feel like “look I have a school!” but never manifests anything serious.

Bryan joined the Marines. Where he earnestly focused on being the best possible Marine, and learning everything he could. Bryan’s “best possible” was quite a lot. That gave him the opportunity to go to sniper school. Bryan saw action on two deployments. If you’re at all familiar with martial arts schools, you might wonder whether becoming a Marine sniper and going to war is a necessary step to teaching a bunch of urban kids and adults in pajamas to punch and kick and roll. You might wonder if Bryan was just doing something to get a start in life while pining for his eventual school. 

Good questions. One thing I’ve learned about Bryan over the years is that his focus is right where he is, on what he’s doing. He keeps goals in mind, but his attention and effort are on the thing in front of him. So as a Marine, Bryan was not a martial-arts-teacher-in-waiting. He chose his path to give him attributes he needed (no one now would see “undisciplined” in him, whatever he might have been like as a teenager for example). But he learned a lot, and he set himself up with GI Bill to support a college education. Which all moved him gradually closer to his goal.

Again, keeping his goal in mind, Bryan knew that martial arts school failures (business failures of any kind) come frequently from poor business skills. Unsurprisingly, people who are good at taking punches to the head don’t always make the best managers, the best finance minds, the best customer relations folks, or the best marketers. So from the Marines, while working as an instructor in a long-term successful school, Bryan went to college for a business degree.

Let me pause here. Do you know anyone who has “always wanted to…” maybe start a business, get a degree, anything really big? But they don’t? I mean folks who say they’re “preparing.” But the road never seems to lead to the goal. In a lot of cases I think people convince themselves “I’m not ready, I’m not good enough yet, I need to just get this one certification first, I can’t start a school as a 1st degree black-belt, I should wait.” It’s a shame how many people have what we now call “imposter syndrome.” They’re always adding more dominoes to the path to their goal. Someone with the “accuracy” skill has to drive to the goal. Eventually they have to get there. If the lead doesn’t even hit the paper, that’s not accurate or precise, even if the reason is that you never pulled the trigger.

So Bryan is out of the military, could open a school right then, but instead again chooses delay. This time it’s a more obvious path to success, ok, getting a business degree that looks like laying a foundation for achieving Bryan’s declared goal. It’s too early to tell.

By the end of college, Bryan had rejoined the community in our art as a respected authority and impressive practitioner. He went up another degree. The gap during his service had been a good opportunity to leave “wild young Bryan” behind in everyone’s minds, and take on a new mature image. The years of teaching at an established school gave him a chance to consider deeply how he wanted his own school to run, to see some of the ins-and-outs of day-to-day operations. And to scout locations.

Finally, college over, Bryan was in a good position to move forward. He found the right location, knew how to start, and he dove in. One thing about his school is how much “sweat equity” went into the build-out. He and friends turned an empty storefront into a thoughtful, lovingly-crafted, welcoming school. He wasn’t in it with a toe in the water. It wasn’t pads on a cement floor and portable stuff. This school is a built environment that makes you feel prepared for training.

It’s rare to have a school run by someone who has wanted to do it since childhood. Most people fall into it, or get passionate about their art and decide to do it, or have a big ego and think it’s a great way to be admired. Bryan is none of those. Bryan took up training in childhood, decided to set his sights on running a school, and by gosh he did it. He did it accurately. The school he has is the school he envisioned (likely with appropriate adjustment based on learning). It’s not a part-time garage school, it’s a full-time real school. His precision was in carefully planned and executed milestones. When his school started, he was ready. (As ready as any new business owner ever is.)

I think it’s important to remember the “side trips.” The willingness to defer a goal to achieve it completely and well. Jumping too soon, investing and preparing too little, those aren’t signs of Competence. Never succeeding, also not Competence. Wanting to run a martial arts school and ending up owning a gym…imprecision.

Bryan knew that his goal wasn’t just to “open a school.” He wanted to be someone with a rich life. Someone who could offer a lot in that role. That shows an early and deep understanding of the role, and a canny ability to find paths that would enrich him as a person (if not his bank account). Taking the time to do something well is a hallmark of Competence. Very often life constrains us. We are short of time, or resources, and we have to make things happen. Bryan is fully able to be accurate and precise achieving short-term or even urgent immediate “goals.” He’s a person you want nearby if things are going sideways. But if you know someone like Bryan, who can handle insightful approaches and achieve long-term goals at the five-star level, I bet you’re looking at Competence.