What you describe is results oriented thinking.
If I asked you 'How do you win', what would you say?
((Think about that for a moment.))
Now, if I asked you 'How do you bake a cake', what would you say?
Maybe you aren't a baker and don't know the very specifics, but you can probably describe what it means. Put some ingredients in a bowl, mix them, put them in a pan and put the pan in the oven. That's a pretty generic statement that most people could make even without very specific knowledge.
The difference in those two questions is that you cannot describe how to win, but you can describe how to bake a cake. That is because the second question is asking for a process. The cake is the result of the baking process. Winning is purely a result.
If you are focused on the process and not the result you are focused on what you can control. I cannot necessarily control if I win, but I can control how I align to the ball, how I stroke the ball, the decisions I make in the course of the game, etcetera. By asking the question 'How do I win' you will almost treat it as a stupid, trivial question because it is seemingly obvious that you must execute these processes. And yet, we so often focus on the result, even if we cannot directly control it.
We want to be process oriented in practice and in game, but we make different decisions. In practice, I may attempt a long, tough, inside english shot over and over to refine technique. In a game, I may decide I'm not as comfortable with that shot as I'd like to be. Maybe that means taking a different positional route, running the balls in a different order, or abandoning the run and playing a safety. In either case, you want to be process oriented.
Pool is a very difficult game because of results oriented thinking. Watching the ball go into the hole is a very satisfying result. Yet, you can make balls and have done nothing 'correct' due to the nature of the physics of the game. This can make repeated results very difficult for players.
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