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Talent Is Worthless, Performance is Priceless!

Guest post by: Stephen Blakesley

Article Overview: Everyone wants to be a winner. No one works to come in last. Read about a simple strategy to move average performers to superior performers.

Talent Is Worthless, Performance is Priceless!

Executives, consultants, and educators have had a lot to say about talent. They have told us how to discover it, develop it and even keep it. Discovering, developing or retaining talented people is of little value, unless they perform at a superior level.

People with talent fail at an alarming rate within organizations. According to Robert Kelley and Janet Caplan, who studied workers at the once prestigious Bell Labs, most talented hires wind up as average or below average performers. Kelley and Caplan found that 85 to 90 percent of the extremely talented people hired never rose beyond average, when it came to productivity. They also found that the 10 to 15 percent of hires that rose to “star performance” status were eight times more productive than the rest.

To put all of this into perspective, let’s say you are responsible for the results of an organization employing 100 people. If your organization is representative, 10 of those people are Star performers, 83 are average, and 7 are slackers. Let’s say, you encounter an economic climate that prohibits you from hiring and compels you to find a means of doing better with what you have. What would be your strategy?

According to our experience, there are, very likely, other star performers hibernating among your workforce. If you could convert just one mediocre performers into a star performers, the value of that conversion, according to the Bell Labs study, would be equivalent to adding eight average performers to your workforce at no additional cost to the organization.

Defining star performance

If your organization wants superior performance, you must first clearly define it.

Many organizations have not defined superior performance. Those that have not, tend to be average performers in the market place. Companies that want to outpace the competition should commit to defining superior performance, not just for one job but for all the key positions in your company.

How does a company define star performance?



Many companies use something similar to a Performance Based Job Description that defines the tasks essential to the job, minimum expected and break though outcomes in the job. A Star Performer in a job would be a person who consistently achieves the break through outcomes.

The nine strategies of highly productive workers



A key to helping people move from average to superior performance lies in helping them understand how to apply their talents. Here are nine work strategies consistent among superior performers:

• Taking Initiative – Star performers go beyond just informing someone of an error, they correct the error. The mediocre don’t.
• Networking- Star performers establish their anticipated needs for outside input prior to beginning a project. The mediocre wait until there’s a need, and then they look for help.
• Self-management- Stars know that self-management goes beyond time management and includes management of effort and knowledge. The mediocre feel that time management is all that’s needed.
• Teamwork effectiveness- Star performers are comfortable with being either a follower or a leader. The mediocre tend to push too hard for leadership roles.
• Leadership – Star performers know that small leadership roles are as important as the bigger, more visible ones. The mediocre are often disappointed with smaller, less viable leadership assignments and, as a result, perform at a level expressing their displeasure.
• Followership – Star performers are aware of the value of following as well as leading and understand the need to contribute to the leader’s and the team’s performance. The mediocre were often difficult in a team setting and more focused on getting credit for themselves.
• Perspective – Superior performers have the big picture and are able to see how their immediate work into the “big picture.” The Star Performer is invested in taking on other view points, like those of the customer, manager or other team members. The mediocre often seem to have a world defined by the length of their reach. They tend to have difficulty in accepting thoughts and ideas from those other than themselves.
• Show-and-Tell – Star performers are master presenters. The mediocre are PowerPoint specialist.
• Organizational savvy – Star performers understand how they contribute to the overall performance of the organization and are capable of navigating through the competing interests of an organization. The mediocre are often perplexed with organization politics and hide behind the mantra of not being a “political person.”

Understanding theses strategies and then defining them for your workforce is a powerful tool among the steps necessary to convert mediocre workers to star performers.

In these difficult times, adding the equivalent of seven average performers to you workforce by converting just one to star status is a strategy that addresses the pressing need to do more with less.

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Article Tags: improve performance, performance, superior performance



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