The Results Mindset

At the end of every month you collect one of two things. A result, or a reason. Most owners collect both and only notice the reason, because the reason is the part that gets said out loud.

This is not about positive thinking, and it is not about pretending external factors do not exist. Most reasons are entirely true. The point is that being true and being useful are different tests, and only one of them changes next month's number.

What the model says

Every outcome has causes. Some of them sit outside you: a client's budget freeze, a supplier going under, interest rates, the weather in February. Some of them sit with you: what you priced, who you hired, what you followed up, what you tolerated.

A reason is an explanation of the causes outside your control. A result is what actually landed in the bank. The results mindset says you are free to note the reason, and you are not free to stop there. Because a reason that is 100% accurate and 0% actionable leaves you exactly where you started, holding a very good explanation of a number you did not want.

The choice is not between honesty and delusion. It is about where you point your attention once the fact is in.

Why reasons are so attractive

Because they are accurate, and accuracy feels like rigour. Because they protect your identity: if the market did it, you are not the problem. Because they are socially rewarded, and a well-told reason gets sympathetic nods at every business breakfast in the country.

Mostly, though, because they cost nothing. Missing your number by £13k and concluding that January is always quiet is free. Missing it by £13k and concluding that you stopped following up quotes after day three is not free. It requires you to have been wrong, and then to do something about it on a Tuesday.

That is the honest reason the loop keeps turning. Explain, justify, move on, repeat. There is no feedback anywhere in it, so nothing improves, and each lap ends precisely where it began.

A worked example

These numbers are illustrative, but the pattern is one you will recognise.

A design agency budgets £75k for the month and lands £62k. Thirteen thousand short. The reasons, all of them genuine: two clients delayed sign-off, a senior designer was off for nine days, the big proposal went quiet, and January is January.

Now the results question. What was inside our control, even partly? So the owner goes to the pipeline. Fourteen proposals went out over the quarter, five were won, so a 36% conversion rate. Of the nine that were lost, six had no recorded follow-up after the initial send. Average proposal value across the quarter was £9,400.

Six proposals with no follow-up. Even at a one-in-three conversion on a proper follow-up sequence, that is two more wins, about £18,800. The £13k gap does not live in January. It lives in what happened on day three after a proposal was emailed, which is entirely within the agency's control and costs nothing but a phone call.

Nothing on the reasons list was untrue. The designer really was off. The client really did delay. They simply were not the lever, and the whole of the previous month's management meeting had been spent on them.

What changes: every proposal now gets a call at day two, day seven and day fourteen, logged on one sheet, reviewed by the owner every Friday morning. Same market next quarter, same seasonality, and now there is a number that will either move or produce a much better diagnosis than the season.

The test that separates them

Two questions do most of the work.

The first: if this reason disappeared tomorrow, would the number change? If a supplier's late delivery genuinely cost you £40k, then supplier reliability is a real lever and belongs on the action list, which makes it a result, not a reason. If removing it changes nothing material, you are describing weather.

The second: what part of this did I control, even 10% of it? Plenty of situations are 90% external. The results mindset is not a claim that you caused everything. It is a refusal to leave the 10% unexamined because the 90% is more interesting to talk about.

Put simply, reasons belong in the report. Results belong in the review. You can write the reason down. You just cannot finish the meeting there.

How to apply it this week

• 1. Take your last missed number and split the page. Reasons on the left, what I controlled on the right. Do not stop until the right-hand column has at least three entries with numbers attached.
• 2. Change the standing question in your management meeting. Replace why did that happen with what will we do differently, by when, and how will we know. Same meeting, entirely different output.
• 3. Attach a number to each controllable factor and pick the biggest. One rule, one owner, one review date. Not six improvements, one.
• 4. Write down your stock reason. Everybody has one: staff, the market, HMRC, the bank, the season. Write yours on a card and put it where you do your monthly review. Its job is to make you notice when you reach for it.
• 5. Ban the word just in reviews. We just had a quiet month. It was just a one-off. The word is a full stop where a question should be.
• 6. Diarise the check. A results mindset with no measurement date is only a better-sounding reason. Six weeks out, in the calendar, with the number you expect to see written next to it.

The mistake most owners make

They turn it into blame. Results not reasons gets said in a firm voice, and what the team actually hears is do not bring me problems. So they stop bringing you problems. You now have a quieter business with worse information in it, which will cost you far more than an occasional excuse ever did.

The opposite mistake is just as common: refusing to acknowledge a genuine external cause because acknowledging it feels like going soft. If a key client went into administration, it went into administration. Saying otherwise makes you look like you are not paying attention, and people stop trusting your read on the business.

The discipline is to do both in one breath. Name the external fact plainly, then move straight to the controllable part without leaving a gap in the middle where a debate can grow. Yes, the client folded, that is £40k of revenue gone. Now, what does that tell us about how concentrated our client base is, and what are we doing about it by the end of the month.

The questions to sit with

• Out of 10, how much of your last monthly review was spent explaining the number rather than deciding something because of it?
• What is your stock reason, and how many quarters have you been using it now?
• If the thing you blamed last quarter never changes, what is your actual plan?
• Where are you 10% responsible for something you have been quietly treating as 0% your fault?

This is one of the load-bearing ideas in the Mindset & Self-Leadership work, and it is the one that shows up fastest in a business. It is not a slogan about attitude. It is a question you put at the end of every review, every month, until it becomes the normal way your business talks about a number it did not like.