This dramatizes the contrast between quick-hit, immediate results–oriented goals (the hands-on approach), and long-term purpose and inner intentions (the hands-off approach). Duane says:
I don’t like goals that are results-oriented at all. We don’t use them in our organization. Sure, we have forecasts to help our financial planning, but we don’t have goals. Therefore we don’t think, Man, am I disappointed in myself because I didn’t sell 10 this month. Our inner dialogue is, I only sold nine this month, and that’s okay, because look at the way I pleased these people. And look at the way I took care of my customers. And look at the quality of what we delivered. And you know what, they’ll tell other people. And next month, I’ll probably sell 11! So I’m not worried about it. I show up happy and optimistic every day because I am proud of what we do and who we are.
Duane doesn’t want his people to have such an attachment to results that not getting them will make them feel discouraged:
We don’t want to feel unhappy with ourselves or unsuccessful because we didn’t accomplish numerically what we said we were going to do, because we did accomplish what we said we were going to do. We delivered a good product. We represented it openly and honestly. We took care of these people after the sale. We provided great service and warranty. We did all those things. Those were our goals. Those were the standards we set for ourselves. They were based in who we were going to be, and the doing just naturally took care of itself.
Trust the universe to reward the inside game. It’s a process of being who you want to be right now, this very moment, instead of straining to reach a future goal.
Duane recalls a development project in southern Utah, a home-building environment where new community developers don’t have a great track record and so are not generally trusted in the beginning. Therefore, when SunCor started a community there, they were working hard to get any sale they could get.
In the first year they sold fewer than 50 homes. The second year it went up to 80. The third year it was up to 100. And the fourth year was just under 120.
“And then, all of a sudden, people realized that we were what we said we were,” Duane says. “The community we were building was not just talking about something that was going to turn out great—it was turning out great. And the people who lived there were telling their friends, ‘This isn’t something where they just say they take care of you after the sale; we’ve been taken care of after the sale.’”
Now they’ve jumped from 120 houses to more than 200 a year.
“We can’t keep up with it!” says Duane. “We’re having to limit our sales because we cannot deliver as much product as people want to buy from us. We can’t develop the lots fast enough, we can’t find enough help to build all the houses we can sell.”
The key here was an absence of stressful external goals. They never focused on how many houses they were going to sell to accomplish this level of success—they had the ingredients of success built in. It was an inner process they committed to, followed through on, and delivered.
“So the inner workings were our true goals,” says Duane. “They were process goals rather than outcome goals. Our enduring desire was to build a quality product. To provide good customer service. And the other goals—the goals of result, the goals of success—we didn’t have them; we didn’t need them. We let things flow naturally from the inner commitment to who we were going to be. The desire to be great and the belief that the inner process will create that.”
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Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.
—Napoleon Hill
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In Good to Great, Jim Collins contrasts companies that have been consistently great over long periods of time with companies that have had their ups and downs. What he found is that over the long haul, the great companies outperform the companies that have the ups and downs by multiples. He didn’t even look at companies that hadn’t been in business for 50 years or more. The fundamental difference between the two is that the companies that have the ups and downs are the companies that are committed to results only. And the companies that consistently grow and outperform over time are the companies that are committed to being great companies. To taking care of their customers, offering great products, and providing great service. Over the long haul it pays off in multiples. These companies have perfected the inner process, and the outer takes care of itself.