The intention to become a high performance company, or the intention to become a high performance team will not attract high performers. It may attract curiosity. It may attract attention to your attempts, but you will not receive commendations for trying.
The only measure of performance is performance.
You will only attract high performers when you are in a state of high performance. And, that starts with you. Yoda says, “Do or do not, there is no TRY.”
Most companies read all the books and hire all the best consultants so they can pursue the path to be the best. When I visit the offices of most CEOS, they have the same books on the shelf, the same slogans on the wall. It looks like a desperate attempt to be be as good as everyone else.
Your company can’t be high performing AND be like everyone else. To be a high performing company, you have to be different. What are the important differences between high performing and everyone else? What are the important differences that matter?
Who do you listen to for advice? There is good advice and bad advice. Some advice leads to abject failure, some advice leads to success. What is the difference?
Between failure and success is average. What advice leads to average success? Action that leads to high performance is different than action that leads you to average performance.
If you know the difference between good advice and bad advice, maybe you don’t need advice at all. Perhaps you need an analytical process that allows you to truly understand the problem, to understand the drivers of the problem. Part of analysis is to determine what you want, what the best outcome could be. In the middle is the collection of alternatives. And somewhere in there is the best alternative, one that avoids the contributors to failure and opens a pathway to a reasonable chance of success.
From the Ask Tom mailbag –
Question:
I just finished your TimeSpan101 online course and have a question.
When interviewing, is it possible to assess potential capability? I imagine that one can listen if applied capability is at current role’s stratum or above? Although this technique doesn’t allow for one to assess an individual’s ability to learn.
Response:
You managed to jam about three questions into one. First is the issue of capability assessment and its methodology. How does one assess capability? The method is somewhat counterintuitive, but extremely reliable. The counterintuitive part is to NOT focus on the individual. Attempting to assess a candidate’s capability is most often outside the interviewer’s skillset. I will almost guarantee an 50 percent failure rate, which means you could flip a coin and do just as well.
The focus, instead, should be on the work. With some familiarity with timespan, it is relatively easy to calibrate the level of work in the role. Examine the function of the role, tools in the role and problem solving in the role. Those three clues will lead you to a very accurate understanding of the level of work required in the role. In that role, what is the work?
Example – if the role is an accounting manager, the function will be to create and maintain an effective accounting system. The tools will be flowcharts, sequence and planning. Problem solving will be root cause analysis. This all points to S-III level of work.
Now, describe the work, define the work. If the candidate is any good at the work, then it follows they likely possess S-III capability.
The next part of your question parses the difference between current capability and potential capability. I will never make a hiring, or promotion decision based on anything other than evidence. No hopes, no wishes, no crossing of fingers. But potential hasn’t happened, so how can we be sure? If a person has potential, there is usually evidence of that potential. Two things I look at are error rate and deadline. If a candidate has a low error rate in current tasks and always meets their deadlines, I have evidence of potential. If a candidate has a high error rate and never meets deadlines, not so much.
The third part of your question specifically asks about learning. Behavioral interviewing requires that we look at past behavior. No future based questions, no hypothetical questions. Simply ask about the past.
An important tool for personal efficiency is the calendar. It allows us to synchronize our time with other people and events. To be even more efficient, our calendar lets us see the white space between things. A time management principle called chunking tells us to put things together, combine, to get rid of that white space. Soon, we have full day filled with color, no white space, perfectly efficient.
In delegation, if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person. A truly busy person is someone who has mastered the art of white space, knows how to slot something in, adjust their schedule and carry on as if it was all there in the beginning. This is the ultimate in creating order in the midst of chaos.
And soon, we have a life full of things on our calendar. Our calendar has us. This is the rat race, the hamster wheel. Is something missing.
The balance in life is not to create order out of chaos. The balance is created on the edge between order and chaos. We have to have enough order to allow time for chaos. Thinking is unstructured exploration into chaos, and with our calendars, we have eliminated it. Most CEOs, executive managers and managers don’t have enough time to think.
Sometimes, it gets so bad, we schedule a retreat on our calendars, to give us time to think. Is it possible to schedule a daily retreat, in the midst of order, which has now become our chaos, to simply think, to reflect, to examine, to explore, to focus attention. Could you make thirty minutes a day, to do nothing but think?
One foot in order and one foot in chaos. It is important for a company to get good at something and be able to deliver that in an efficient manner. That’s order.
Simultaneously, a company must spend time improving its product or service, discovering a new product or service, finding a new market segment. That’s chaos.
A company cannot sock away all the fruits (profit) of its labor. Some of those fruits have to be reinvested in chaos. It seems counterintuitive, sometimes unproductive, often painful. But it must be done, because eventually, your market will demand it.
From the Ask Tom mailbag:
Question:
My boss feels I am very good at my work, but that I don’t take responsibility. I tried to ask him what he means by that. He said that I have to be told every time what I must do. So, I tried to do things on my own initiative, but then he questions me “who told you to do this?” Most of the time when I ask about something I think I should do, he says “no” and asks me to do something else. How do I impress my boss that I am a person who takes responsibility or is at least willing to take responsibility?
Response:
Your attitude and willingness are in the right place, so let’s make one small change. I want you to ask your boss to meet with you to plan out your work for an entire day. I want you to create a checklist on paper and then work the checklist. The problem is not responsibility. You appear to be a responsible person.
The problem is time span. You appear to work on a single task at a time and then return to your boss for more direction. I want you to lengthen the time span by creating a checklist with a sequence of tasks for the entire day.
At the end of the day, you will be able to show him the checklist and what items you have completed. That will be evidence that you are, indeed, a responsible person.
The key is time span.
Are we in a recession or not? The S&P just made a new record high. The consultants response is always a handy – it depends.
If you are not paying attention, a recession could pass you by without hope of your own recovery. Even large scale macro-economic contractions spread the pain in different places and exert more pressure at different times. And, the winds could come from both the market side and the supply side.
In the sweltering heat of the summer, you would think a swimming pool would be a good investment. Indeed it was during COVID, when everyone was stuck at home. There were market pressures on other industries, but swimming pools were all the rage. But, now, the winds have shifted. According to a POOL report, the construction cost (materials and labor have risen 72%, from an average of $43k to $72k. In 2023, there was a 23% decline in new pool construction and POOL expects another 20% decline in 2024.
Are we in a recession or not? It depends. What indicators are you looking at, external and internal? When is your turn to go into the tank? Don’t get caught unaware.
If I broke in and stole all the mission, vision, value statement plaques, mixed them up and replaced them, would anybody notice?
Timespan gives us insight.
We are very good at planning. Planning is temporal, mostly short term, rarely extending out more than 12 months. And, we are good at it. We can imagine the specific requirements, resources, people, interim checkpoints, quality standards, inspections, proofing and format of the final output. All of this is tangible, concrete.
Beyond tangible concrete ideas, are intangible conceptual ideas. Measured in timespan, those ideas are further into the future. And we are not very good at thinking in those terms, much less expressing ourselves in writing.
But, we are told we must. We must think about the future. We must think about the future of our organization and we must do so in the form of organizing documents, mission, vision, values. And, we struggle
Sure, we can dream, but most dreams lack meaning, and it is meaning that drives our organizing documents. Those organizing documents are in the pursuit of meaning. A company can dictate a purpose, well laid out in a plan, but to gain enrollment from our teams, the mission of the company seeks to define its meaning. Without meaning, it all falls apart, eventually.
Meaning is seldom found in a 12 month plan. Meaning requires us to think further into the future. We are mostly ill-equipped to do this. We don’t spend much time thinking conceptually and when we do, we all sound the same. Hence most mission statements sound the same. “To be the premier provider, serving our customer with value add, providing shareholder value for their investment.”
What is meaningful about what your organization does?
What is captivating to your organization’s imagination?
What is helpful to your community?
What will sustain your organization beyond your 12 month plan?
Abraham Maslow’s pyramid was a hierarchy. He called it the hierarchy of needs (not wants, not desires, not recommendations). Humans have different levels of needs. The dynamics in the hierarchy dictate that when we are threatened at a level below, we must immediately retreat to that level and cannot emerge until that level is satisfied. Pyramids start at the bottom.
V – Self Actualization
IV – Importance
III – Belonging
II – Security
I – Survival
Most people focus on the content of each level, but each is more complex based on timespan.
Survival needs are immediate. Air, water, food, protection from the elements, cold, heat, exposure.
Security needs are identical to survival, but the timespan is longer. We need air, but we need sustained clean air. We need food for today and we need food for tomorrow (enter the refrigerator). We need a blanket today, but we need a condominium for tomorrow. Important to note, if our immediate survival is threatened, we don’t think much about the condo.
Belonging to a group is a basic biologic need. Animals belong to herds or packs as a matter of longer term survival. Wise animals stay to the center of the herd as the periphery gets picked off by predators. Humans belong to conceptual herds. Membership involves rituals to remain in good standing with the conceptual herd. The timespan associated with group belonging is longer than either survival or security.
Importance raises the level of complexity. Passing a membership ritual may allow a person to remain with the conceptual herd, but to cement that relationship requires meaningful contribution. It is a human need to make important contribution to a group that individual holds as meaningful.
Self-actualization is the most complex human need, some never reach this level. The timespan associated with self-actualization is well into the aspirational future. Indeed, some legacies contemplate behavioral impacts beyond death. While the other levels in Maslow’s hierarchy are self-centered, or selfish, this level is selfless, concern for contribution to community, as defined by the individual. Elon Musk wants to go to Mars.