Finally, Lambert didn't do anything to improve his performance, but produced his planned output: getting there in 3 days. He also achieved the desired outcome despite not arriving first.
The story of the three brothers tells us that, no matter how much we want to see determinant causality between performance, output and outcome, they are still 3 inter-dependent concepts.
Outcome is most important. It is the reason the brothers set out to Richfield in the first place. But outcomes are elusive and not entirely in our hands.
Performance, however, is up to us to develop. We practice, we train, we learn to develop our competence and perform better everyday.
With competence we produce output, but tangible output is subject to the circumstances of this world, not always predictable.