Incremental Improvements for High Performance Employees

The Podium

It stands to reason that we celebrate the best performances. Consider the Olympic podium and the medal ceremony. The top athletes in the entire world compete in their specialized field to claim a gold medal - a sure sign that they are, indisputably, the absolute best at what they do. Human nature also leads us to a somewhat unfair line of thought when it comes to those that didn't win Gold. Sadly, the Silver and Bronze winners are barely thought of as winners. Most people couldn't tell you who got Silver against Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps. Very few people could name an athlete that didn't make the podium at all. In reality, the difference between the Gold medal winner in a race and the Silver may be as little as thousandths of a second. Sometimes both Gold and Silver break the standing record in the same event, but only the Gold earns the new record.

Ranking Bias

When you think of high performers on your team, you can probably think of your top performer almost immediately. You would also consider your 'podium' of performers. Conversely, you know who didn't 'qualify for the event'. As leaders, we sometimes spend a lot of effort focusing on our bottom performers while allowing our standouts to 'carry the team'. This leads to burnout among our best, which in turn leads to a decrease of their own performance.

We see a version of this in professional sports where an over-reliance on a key player leads to injury and shortened careers. The lack of care and attention for some of our most valuable members fosters an environment where there is no motivation to improve. If a high-performer thinks that they are at their absolute peak, why would they strive for more?

Coaches vs Players

Keeping with the sports analogy, consider how even Tom Brady had a QB coach. That QB coach isn't there to teach Tom Brady how to throw a football. A player's talent shines in the game - whereas a coach's talent is to identify areas where that top player could make adjustments to be even better. Highlighting the things that you notice from an outside perspective can help the employee shift their focus ever so slightly to improve some part of their process or performance.

There is value in giving time and attention to your top team members beyond the improvements themselves. This allows them to develop and thrive beyond the skills that they came to you with, and can overcome habits developed on the job. Additionally, it allows leadership to ensure that they aren't giving false praises solely based on perception/reputation. Feedback is valuable at any level, so long as it is both honest and purposeful.

Behavioral Improvement vs Metrics Management

Recently, I had the pleasure of working with a member of our Customer Support team to make some incremental improvements. This person was someone who I was heavily involved with during their initial training over a year ago. Their manager recently suggested to them to spend some time with a trainer to look at how to avoid going down rabbit-holes in research, and knowing when to take a step back when investigating things for a customer issue. To be clear, this person's manager thinks they do great work, but would have more output if they managed their time just a tad better.

We talked about how their desire to achieve the best possible results can sometimes create blind spots. A few key areas were uncovered during discussion:

• Overanalyzing data
• Chasing a lead and not knowing when to move on
• Wanting to fully resolve a lack of understanding before proceeding

I reassured this person that in no way would we want to mute their natural curiosity. In fact, curiosity is one of the best drivers for people in technical roles that need to cover a particularly broad range of products or have access to wide variety of data. It also propels a desire to learn and grow outside just the hours you put into work. With that said, we drilled down on some specific scenarios where they could have looked at the signs a little differently before digging in to the work.

For instance, they said that they sometimes will start investigating before reading the entire issue. It's not always a problem to attack the first piece, but sometimes the way customers present information to us, they include details that aren't necessarily relevant. Not intentionally, just as a byproduct of their need for help from the company whose platform they are using. I related this to a baker putting mixed ingredients straight into the oven, but then realizing that the recipe called for letting them sit in the freezer for an hour before baking. I assured them that they had the right spirit, but that it can have an unintended impact.

We went on to talk about how sometimes when trying to establish the current state of an ongoing situation, previous work and communications might lead to a false sense of severity. Giving oneself permission to relax while determining what is happening is more empowering than it might seem on the surface.

They made a comment along the lines of "maybe I should just focus on taking more support tickets" - to which I had to reassure them that their ticket output would increase naturally by addressing the behaviors we had discussed. If they concerned themselves with simply increasing their output, they'd be doing so by amplifying their current behaviors, which would actually lead to a decrease in quality. Obviously, that is not what we want. That reaction though, that instinct to feel the need to 'simply do more' is far too common. We improve by adjusting behaviors, not by chasing metrics.