Interesting. In my newsletter as well as a blog posting here recently, I mention the growth and seeming acceptance of mediocrity in organizations today.
Must’ve struck a nerve.
I’ve received almost a dozen comments on that specific topic, and several emails from current or past clients who believed I was referring to their firm in my example!
This should give us some insight to the general ubiquity of mediocrity in the workplace and its acceptance as a norm, or at least a tolerable cost of doing business.
One such email, from a highly-decorated senior military officer (edited/paraphrased for length):
Okay, so your management talent musings speak directly to those of us who are forced to hire someone based on how they look on paper and then have only a matter of months before we have to make a decision about whether they can go beyond management and into leadership. Sometimes we strike gold, but only if the individual’s talents were developed before we inherited them. More often than not, we end up with someone who “just doesn’t get it” and have to spend extra time keeping/getting them out of trouble. Too bad most of our informal mentorship efforts don’t occur until late in the process.
To that I must respond:
First, corporate USA doesn’t do much better than the paper instance you describe, even with headhunters, behavior interviewing and “free choice.” In fact, I could argue that they could potentially do worse, as they pull from a pool that doesn’t have a general – albeit sometimes inconsistent – initial standard.
And if my experiences are anywhere near “normal,” the clear majority of executive hires “don’t get it,” and I can’t clearly say I know exactly why. I’m sure it’s institutional/systemic, but nailing down the precise cause is difficult.
Another…
You’ve done a good job of paraphrasing “First Break All the Rules.” I assume you’ve read the book… treating everyone the same may be conventional wisdom, but it doesn’t make an organization any more successful than fool’s gold makes you rich.
Treat your good folks like good folks and your superstars like superstars. If the slugs don’t like it, they can improve or move on. Like stratifying on performance reports, not everyone can be #1 or a “top performer.”
Well, I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t read the book, but there’s certainly nothing I can add to that last paragraph, except maybe, “Here, Here!!”
Great comments, Kev.
(No, I’m not complimenting myself — the input above came from someone with the same equally distinguished name)
If the topic of Performance Mediocrity is so charged, why aren’t we addressing it head-on??
We need speed. Not the breakneck, uncontrolled, sitting-your-ass-on-a-rocket kind of speed, but the speed necessary to move quickly and smartly. Given consistent data and input, faster is almost always better than slower.
We’ve been stressed, haven’t we? New craziness pops up almost daily, certainly monthly. We feel justified in being somewhat overwhelmed, and at times that feeling can slow us down – or even grind us to a halt.
That’s not helpful, and we shouldn’t do it. We aren’t forced into it, we have options. Here are some suggestions when the pace of change feels like The Enterprise in a Federation wormhole…
Play the cards you’re dealt. Yeah, I know, sometimes they suck. We’d like a different hand, some new cards. Suck it up, buttercup; they are what they are. It is what it is. Que sera, sera. Deal with it. Or my favorite, “be that as it may…”
In other words, take what you have, figure out how to make it work, then violently execute. Sometimes you’ve got to work with what you’ve got and take what you can. This is one of those times.
Pick a lane. Add speed. This one sometimes gets a bad rap. There are those out there (they walk among us) who will tell you to slow down, move methodically, deliberately. Slowly. I say bullshit. Pick a lane, add speed. With consistent data and insights, speed trumps stalling. 100% of the time.
Some fast decisions hit the bullseye – great! Others act as tracer rounds so we can keep firing, each time getting closer and closer to our intended target/result. A tracer round you can see is a small win – take it, move on to the next. Quickly.
The faster you decide, the faster you can act. The faster the action, the more responsive you can be to change, both planned and “not-so-much.”
Practice Predictive Resiliency. This is a new one, so if you haven’t been on the edge of your seat up to now (and you should’ve been), you’ll need to pay attention to this.
Resiliency is great. It’s a wonderful characteristic to have, but by nature it’s passive. Take a change or unexpected force, absorb it, then bounce back, no worse for wear, ready to meet that next change with some more springy emotions. That’s resiliency, and we’ve preached it for years. This is not that. Well, it’s a little of that, with a twist.
Predictive Resiliency is seeing the change coming, like the light of an out-of-control freight train, deciding what would work better for you that that, then pivoting with the train’s momentum, using it like a flywheel to accelerate in a better direction. Taking unplanned change and making it proactive by pivoting.
Sound crazy? It’s not. An example: Uber faced a near-fatal challenge in California, where the state passed a law making their thousands of contract drivers into employees overnight.
Never mind where you stand on the issue; Uber had a choice: accept the change and spring back gently, changing their business model entirely for a single state, or pivot hard – taking the momentum and public attention the issue was receiving and forcing a voter referendum. No passive resiliency here… it was Predictive Resiliency, pivoting from the passive into a “proactive reaction,” not an oxymoron in this case. It paid off for Uber.
There are myriad examples of taking anticipated change, seeing a more successful direction to go instead of the proposed change, then pivoting hard to execute. Try it sometime. You’ll like it.
And remember: Be Brazen. Grace and accountability can coexist.
Focused businessman is reading through magnifying glass document
Several years ago, my sister gave me a book about how to deal with the controlling perfectionists in our lives. She said I might benefit from an impartial description of — get this — me.
Ouch.
Okay, so I only had two standards: perfect and unacceptable. That didn’t make me a bad person did it?
It’s not like I imposed my unreasonably high standards on my family or people at work. After all, I’ve always said, “Don’t let perfection get in the way of good enough.” And I talked plenty about building a culture where failures are learning experiences and not short-cuts to the unemployment line, of embracing our own failures as stepping stones on the road to self-improvement, yadda yadda yadda.
Other people’s failures, of course.
So what’s the problem with having unreasonably high standards?
The problem is that it makes us damned hard to work for. And guess what, as leaders it’s not about us; it’s about them. We don’t get the best from people when we bully them — yes, perfectionists bully, even if that’s not our intent.
Perfectionists notice only what’s wrong and not what’s right. But if our feedback style doesn’t include some encouragement about the good while we’re delivering the bad and the ugly, we’re liable to stop seeing the good at all.
I’ve got the stick for a minute.
It used to be a gold-star day when someone got a report past me without needing some re-work. Did that motivate them to try their best? Only initially, but when they learned their best would never been good enough, they started sending me crap knowing I’d put the effort into polishing the turd. Hardly the practice of a high-performing team.
Perfectionists are inflexible, resistant to change, and stubborn about having it done our way. Nothing wrong with that, since our way is the best, right? I can assure you that when we aren’t willing to let others do a task less well than we would do it ourselves, we end up pretty much doing everything ourselves anyway. Then we complain about being overworked, underappreciated, and short on the time and energy we need to be spending as leaders.
My mother would say, “You kind of brought that on yourself, didn’t you?”
With a tip of the hat to Maya Angelou, “…people will never forget how you made them feel.” Perfectionist bosses make others feel like they can’t do anything right. Not the legacy I wanted to leave as a leader, but what was I to do? ‘Good enough’ is the last thing I wanted to be remembered as.
Oh, that’s right… it’s not about me; it’s about them.
The good news: it’s simple to change. The bad news: it’s not that easy.
First, admit it — like any good twelve step program. Admit that you’re holding others to a standard that you, yourself can’t meet, and in the process holding the organization hostage.
The second step simply requires you to reframe success. Is perfection success? Probably. What about excellent? How about fully compliant and on time? What if your email gets the message delivered effectively but is missing a comma? Can you see where I’m going with that?
That’s it. That’s all it took for me. (Okay, like anyone in recovery, I’m a work in progress.)
Make sure your people know what success looks like, and when they get there, let them know it. Set clear and reasonable (achievable) expectations for them — and yourself — and celebrate when they’re met. That doesn’t mean settle for good enough; by all means, shoot for the stars, make continuous improvements, set audacious goals. Just make sure you’ve effectively communicated what success looks like and be happy when you get there.
Weathering the storm — whether climate or business — requires us to do some things purposefully:
1. Be in charge. Lead, decide. The buck stops with you.
2. Lead now, panic later. Frazzled emotions are human, frazzled behaviors are not ok.
3. Nobody wins the blame game. Get past today, throw rocks later. Or not.
Is your performance management system identifying your organization’s best leaders or its best doers? Are they being rewarded for their individual performance, or are they being recognized for how successful they’re making their team?
Do they get ahead by being competitive and striving to be the best, or do you value and promote those who collaborate and strive to make the company its best?
I’ve got the stick for a minute.
Late in my military career, I was blessed to command a fantastic group of diverse, talented and motivated Airmen. The only part that wasn’t awesome was that we lacked sufficient personnel and resources to be fully capable of executing our assigned missions. Often, we found ourselves in a situation which pitted me against my peers in a competition for more – more people, more money, more equipment, and more priority.
I initially thought it was the perfect job for me, because I’d spent most of my career competing for more.
Unfortunately (for me), my boss cared more about getting along and expected me to play well with others. After a little attitude adjustment, I found that collaborating with the other leaders – cross-training and developing people, and sharing the recognition accolades when their folks were involved – made us all more effective and successful.
Collectively, our teams’ successes made the entire organization more mission capable and successful.
Why did I feel it necessary to be so competitive? Because I was developed under a performance management system that encouraged individuals to be the best of the best, not collaborative and supportive. After all, we only want the best to be the leaders of our military forces, right?
And you probably want the best in your company to lead your employees. Who doesn’t?
But, when a rewards system keeps people focused on what they do and not why they do it, they become more competitive than collaborative. They put a priority on individual accomplishments and technical competence and miss out on the people skills development that comes from succeeding – or failing – as part of a team. Ultimately, the business suffers when decisions are made without considering what’s best for the organization as a whole.
It gets worse when you promote the best doer to be an unprepared manager, but that’s a subject for a different day.
I’ve read a lot of management job descriptions with sentences that start “Leads this…” and “Leads that…” However, I have yet to see a single performance review process that actually grades people on their leadership. Not that those systems don’t exist; I just haven’t seen one in practice.
Instead, we give managers credit for what their teams accomplish without helping them understand how their accomplishments contribute to the success of their department, the company, and the clients. In my example above, I was focused on how successful we could be instead of how successful WE (get it, the royal WE?) could be.
When you unwittingly pit employees against each other – especially at executive levels – you end up with people who spend their time jockeying for position, competing for resources, and vying for attention and recognition.
They end up focused on themselves, not the organization and certainly not the people they’re charged to lead. Too many senior leadership “teams” pretend to get along, while everyone below them on the food chain knows it’s just contrived collegiality. They talk a good game, but what they’re really playing is “what’s in it for me,” and their people and the company are suffering for it.
What does your performance review process encourage? Is it about their contribution to the larger effort?
Can they tell that their performance is judged by how successful they’ve made others, or are they too concerned about how they’re doing compared to others?
Don’t wait for HR to change the system. Have the conversations now that set different expectations for 2018! Make it the Year of Collaboration and Success.
