Seth Godin spoke at Leadercast 2015 and one of the most profound things he said was “We can be prepared, but we will never be ready – its always too soon.”

This applies to so many thing in life like getting married or having children.  We can think we are prepared, but you are never truly ready.  You can never have all the skills needed.  They can never be honed to the point where you are truly ready.  These things are developed and sharpened only through the experience.

On a similar note, Rudy Giuliani gave a preparation ratio of 4:1.  A key piece of advice he was given early in his career was to prepare 4 hours for every hour of performance.  In his particular case it was preparation for being in the court room.

Oftentimes we are on the wrong side of preparation with too much or too little.  I believe it is possible to be too prepared if you are always preparing and never taking action.  If the preparation gets in the way of action because you never feel ready, then it is over-preparation.  Preparation must be tested by performance.  Only with intervals of preparation followed by performance followed by preparation and so on can we truly improve.  After the performance of a task or skill, then I can reflect and adjust my preparation.  This improved preparation will then improve my performance.  By repeating this pattern it should become a virtuous cycle.  Each subsequent performance should be better than the last as should each preparation time be better than the last.  This will continue until one day you look back and admire the great distance you’ve covered.  A significant improvement lies in your wake and you cannot even recognize that old self as you.

It is a fascinating thought exercise to try and define practice and performance in business.  In sports it is easy to discern what is practice and what is performance based upon the playing field and the opponent.  Our daily office lives are not always quite so defined.  Especially when it comes to leadership activities.

There are some activities that I believe to be clearly defined as preparation such as reading, meditation, self reflection, journaling, education, and mentoring conversations.

There are some activities that I believe to be clearly defined as performance such as customer interactions, final product design decisions, hiring, firing, major capital purchases.

Then there are some that can be either depending on the moment such as networking, coaching conversations, strategy discussions, interviews.

The main objective is really to understand your specific situation, what results really matter and how you would measure them.  If you can measure results, it should be easier to define what winning looks like.  Then if it is a direct action towards making that result reality, then it is performance.  If it is an action that puts you in a better situation to generate the result, it is preparation.  Keep in mind that you must find that balance between preparation and performance.  Also know that it will not always be constant.  There will be seasons of preparation and seasons of execution.