 Bobby is really interested in Maggie and decides he will offer to take her out for lunch so he can get to know her better. To make this possible, he goes into his mother's purse and takes enough money to impress even the prettiest girl in the class. Do the ends justify the means? Is it right if he accomplishes what he wanted to do to impress his pretty classmate as someone who is willing and able to do this? Performance engineering has an answer and it is the black box. He has a valued result to gain and that is to get his young classmate's attention focused on him. He has his personal time and effort to put toward this purpose. With performance thinking, we put the rest into the black box and it no longer matters. The simple answer to the justification question is that performance thinking never justifies a process. Performance is based on costs and results. The process is always the choice of the one who decides what to do. The more important performance question is whether Maggie wants to know someone who is willing to be a thief to impress her. It is perhaps flattering. It is also likely to be a turnoff for getting any closer to him. The harder question, the one that defines performance thinking, is a closer understanding of a valued result. What will be the result from spending a little one-on-one time with Maggie? Will it really be valuable or is it just a process that Bobby would like to use to accomplish something else? As a rule, if what you do is more important than what you accomplish, you will not be able to accomplish much of anything. Education, including gathering knowledge and learning things to do, is valuable only in increasing your potentials for success. It is not education that has value. It is you who become more valuable because you are educated. Education is a process. Put that process inside the black box and lock it away from sight. What matters is the time and effort you must put in to receive the benefit of education and the impact that this education will have on your future, on what you will then be able to accomplish. As a teenager, you are in a time of change. You are learning to become more effective in what you do, even as you grow and change into that person who can assume more and more control over your own destiny. You will be the one deciding what to do based on your own sense of what will eventually have value. As a teenager, you lack experience, but are offered the experience of many others who have already grown into mature adults and who have experienced many decades of life as adults. Education is an investment you make in your future. You cannot see the valuable results clearly because your sense of value is also growing and changing, but there is still an investment. There is still your time and effort that you commit to the educational process because of your own expectation of receiving an increased ability to do things as an adult. Almost everyone gains potency by receiving an education. What has worked for a wide range of other people is almost certain to work for you as well. Even here, there is a performance approach. Lock educational process in the box. It is not the educational process that determines what you gained, but your decisions on what you do to gain it. You were fed education as a younger child, but now find yourself with some choices on what to gain. How much time and effort you commit and what you do to receive what education provides. When you were just kids, your family made the investment for you. They committed your time and effort to an educational process that they had available to them for just this purpose. This is changing as you grow and mature. Your performance value is increasingly affected by the choices you make. What you receive will not just be based on lessons, class participation, or even listening to teachers. These are just processes. Yes, they have recognized value and should be respected as such. But the choice of how to get the most still rests with you. And your choices will become more and more a part of your education as you continue this wonderful investment. What value will define performance for you? Your choice to seek new value will always be your personal decision. And you must be the one who has something to accomplish. Nobody else decides this for you. Looking for what has value is a discipline. And it is not simply reaction to immediate wants or needs. It goes to who you are. It goes to what you envision as future that you may or may not get through your actions. And the value you expect to receive from your commitment of your time and effort. When it comes to education, the student, you, are the only party in interest. Is that really true? Are you educated to fit in with other people? Aren't you educated to have a common base of understanding so that you can communicate effectively with others? Look at this in terms of performance. You are the only one spending time and energy to gain a valued result. If others are involved, it is because you value them.