Nobody Hired Us to Deliver Shoes

This spring I decided to get back into running. You already know how this story is going to end, but hold on. There's a point other than my own humiliation.

I ran in high school, and after years of cycling, it seemed like a good way to mix up my workouts. Plus, it's cheaper and easier to put on some shoes and run out the door. So I bought a great pair of shoes. I bought two pairs, actually. Because I needed one for running on trails and in the rain. Because I was going to be a runner again. Bought some pants for cool weather running.

Shoes fit. They looked cool. My kids told me they weren't cringe. Built my training plan for the next three months. Job done!

Then I went on my first run in 30 years, if that's what you'd call what I was doing. I don't remember when my left hip started hurting, because my right foot hurt even worse. That was six months ago. One pair has been used on some fantastic dog walks. And I have a pair of Norda trail runners, size 10, if you'd like them.

Three things were supposed to happen, and only one did. The shoes were delivered. Running was supposed to become a habit. And the reason for all of it, being fitter, never showed up. Notice when I declared the job done: the day the shoes fit and the plan was built. I've watched plenty of transformations do the same. The system goes live, the process is documented, the training is scheduled, and everyone treats that as the finish line, because it's the part everyone can see. Like my shoes, those things are a way to get somewhere.

A transformation has the same three finish lines.

Delivered is the one we measure rigorously. It has a scope, a budget and a date, and often another team owns it. That matters, and it's only the first finish line. Adopted is better. What we count there, training completion, logins and an adoption score built from a few quick observations, tells us people showed up. It doesn't tell us whether it's working. Had I logged my two runs, the dashboard would have said I was partially adopting. If it wanted to be really helpful, it would have called a physical therapist. Realized is the one we rarely measure. Nobody hired a transformation team to deliver shoes. We exist for the third line, and we report on the second because the second is countable.

The reasons for this gap are mostly structural. A team's scope ends at go-live. The sponsor moves on before the result shows up. The business case was written to win funding, so there's nothing to track it against. And there's no standard set of leading indicators for the third line, because value is different on every project.

Measuring it by hand is hard, which is why most teams skip it. You can still start small, before the work begins, by asking three questions about each finish line. What will we see people doing? What will we hear people saying? What will we count?

What you see is behavior, and what you hear is attitude. Those are your early signals. The business number shows up late, but a manager assigning work the new way shows up in week three, and so does someone saying, "I understand why we're doing this, and my manager is already talking about it."

Had I done this with running: I'd see myself out the door three mornings a week by week three. I'd hear myself say I was looking forward to it, not that my foot hurt. And the count would be a 5K without stopping by August. (Let me live my dream, okay!) By week two I'd have known I was off track. Put a name next to each answer, the person who will confirm it. Every two weeks, mark each finish line on track, off track, or can't tell. And it's okay for the answer to be "can't tell". It's often the most useful answer, because it shows where nobody is collecting evidence.

If you're leading a transformation, or you're working with a team, make sure you cross all the finish lines.