Why is your team underperforming?

Last week, I was watching a friend play tennis, and after losing a close set, he said: "I played the best tennis of my life today. I just lost."

At first I thought he was consoling himself. But then I realised he wasn't wrong.

He could control his footwork, his focus, his shot selection. He could not control the wind, the opponent's form, or that one lucky net cord. The scoreline said "loss." His performance said something else.

Since then, I've been thinking about how rarely we apply this logic at work.

We reward people almost entirely on what they closed, hit, or delivered this quarter, and when the number doesn't show up, we treat everything that led to it as irrelevant, regardless of how much of it was actually within their control. 

But output is often a function of input plus circumstance, and circumstance never ask for permission. 

You do the work, and then the market moves anyway. The client who was ready to sign goes quiet for reasons that have nothing to do with your pitch. A competitor drops their price the day before you were set to close. None of that shows up in the number. All of it shaped the number. 

So what happens when we only reward the scoreline? People stop taking calculated risks that don't guarantee a win. They play safe tennis instead of good tennis.

The job of the leader isn't just owning the output. It's building a culture where the input gets recognised, even when the scoreline doesn't reflect it.

Because if we only celebrate winning, we teach people to stop trying to play well.