Talent And Productivity
I spent some time this week at a workshop with Professor Das Naryandas, one of the more popular profs at Harvard Business School as well as Chair of Harvard Business Publishing and of Harvard Business School Executive Education's Advanced Management Program. He is, as he describes it, ultimately a researcher who spends time analysing why businesses and organizations do spectacularly well and why they don't.
One of the things we touched on was his research on talent and productivity. They came up with a measurement of the difference in performance between average and top performers:
On a low complexity role, the high performers generated 52% better output (whether it be profitability, production, speed, whatever metric was defined) than average performers.
On a medium complexity task, the high performers generated 85% better output than average performers.
On a high complexity task, the high performers generated 127% better output.
This assumes that you and or your company can, overall, hire average performers! What if you can't? What if your teams are on the lower end of the bell curve?
Well, Professor Das researched that as well. The results are:
Low complexity task - the high performers outperformed the low performers by 300%
Medium complexity task - the high performers outperformed the low performers by 1200%
High complexity task - the low performers could not learn the job at all! It often resulted in failure.
I am a believer in this data because over 10 or so years ago, we acquired a company that was very much under performing...in fact, we acquired it because it was on the brink of bankruptcy due to, what I believed, was mismanagement and poor hiring. After acquiring the business, we started to reorganize the company and put in place people that presented the traits that we believed were qualities that made them high performers. It took 36 months to get the business to deliver 300% better performance - both in growth rates and profitability. The number, oddly enough, was around 300%. Today, the company is more than 12 times - over 1200% more profitable than when I first saw its information over 10 years ago.
I believe Professor Das' research because I have seen it with my own eyes...It's all about the people that we work with.
The big question is how do you find out what a high performer looks like? And where do you find them?
Over dinner that night, I was curious if Professor Das had any comment on what high performers looked like so I asked him. He said, "they look just like everyone else". After which, we proceeded to finish our wine :).
Stay tuned for next weeks blog post and I will share some personal insight into high performers.
Here are some parting thoughts: Do you know if you are a low, average, or high performer? What are you prepared to do about it?
One of the things we touched on was his research on talent and productivity. They came up with a measurement of the difference in performance between average and top performers:
On a low complexity role, the high performers generated 52% better output (whether it be profitability, production, speed, whatever metric was defined) than average performers.
On a medium complexity task, the high performers generated 85% better output than average performers.
On a high complexity task, the high performers generated 127% better output.
This assumes that you and or your company can, overall, hire average performers! What if you can't? What if your teams are on the lower end of the bell curve?
Well, Professor Das researched that as well. The results are:
Low complexity task - the high performers outperformed the low performers by 300%
Medium complexity task - the high performers outperformed the low performers by 1200%
High complexity task - the low performers could not learn the job at all! It often resulted in failure.
I am a believer in this data because over 10 or so years ago, we acquired a company that was very much under performing...in fact, we acquired it because it was on the brink of bankruptcy due to, what I believed, was mismanagement and poor hiring. After acquiring the business, we started to reorganize the company and put in place people that presented the traits that we believed were qualities that made them high performers. It took 36 months to get the business to deliver 300% better performance - both in growth rates and profitability. The number, oddly enough, was around 300%. Today, the company is more than 12 times - over 1200% more profitable than when I first saw its information over 10 years ago.
I believe Professor Das' research because I have seen it with my own eyes...It's all about the people that we work with.
The big question is how do you find out what a high performer looks like? And where do you find them?
Over dinner that night, I was curious if Professor Das had any comment on what high performers looked like so I asked him. He said, "they look just like everyone else". After which, we proceeded to finish our wine :).
Stay tuned for next weeks blog post and I will share some personal insight into high performers.
Here are some parting thoughts: Do you know if you are a low, average, or high performer? What are you prepared to do about it?
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| I am still trying to figure out if my dog Buddy is a high performer? |
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