Ask most of us what happened to Abhinav Bindra in Rio, and we will say he came fourth, which is our polite way of saying he lost. I thought the same for years. Then I read what he said about it himself, and he calls Rio the Olympics he was most satisfied with. Five Games in his career, one of them with a gold medal in it, and the one he rates highest is the one where he came home with nothing to hold up at the airport.
Here is what happened that morning. A table broke, which is a strange way to be undone at an Olympic Games, and the rifle resting on that table came down with it, and the rear sight snapped off. He had built that sight for the light in that hall and had trained with it for months. He fitted an old spare he had last used back home in India, went in, and shot well enough to reach the final. He mentioned it to nobody, and it only came out later through someone on his support staff, because he was never going to hand anyone an excuse. He finished fourth, half a point away from bronze in the shoot-off.
He was grading himself on a different paper from the rest of us. His question was a simple one. Did he do his job properly on a morning that had already gone wrong? The answer was yes, and the medal table disagreed, and he seems to have accepted long ago that the medal table was never his to control.
The Bhagavad Gita says it in the fourth chapter. tyaktva karma phala sangam nitya trpto nirasrayah (BG 4.20)
Stop clinging to the result of your work, and you stay content on your own steam, without needing the world to hand you anything.
Now, the harder part. Most of us who run companies say we value the process over the result. We say it in appraisals, where the person across the table stopped believing us some years ago. Then a quarter closes, a number is missed, and off we go looking for someone to blame without once asking whether a table broke that morning. Our people know exactly which of the two we reward. They have watched what happened to the colleague who did everything right and still missed.
None of this means results stop mattering. They matter, and a company that stops caring about them stops being a company. What we can manage is honesty about which standard we are using today. If it is the number, say so plainly and stop dressing it up in nicer clothes.
Bindra had one luxury that nobody working for us has. He was his own boss on that range, so he could hold himself to his own standard with nobody above him holding a different one.
Our people do not get to pick their standard. We pick it for them, which is why the honesty has to start on our side of the table.