"By failing to create a high performance team driven culture, and capturing the potential of their people many organisations never achieve their true potential. This huge waste in terms of energy, enthusiasm, commitment and drive can be radically reduced by focusing on inspiring staff to move beyond their zone of comfort and commit to optimal performance. This article is about developing the strategies to achieve this goal."
Strategies for Maximising Human Potential
When you start to calculate how much is lost to any business each year because of applying archaic management principles, it is no surprise that many staff see their role as no more than a mundane 9-5 job which solely meets only their basic needs. So it's hardly surprising that the contribution and creativity displayed at work is not always of the highest level.
Few organisations understand the true financial cost to their business of failing to master the potential of their people is billions of pounds and dollars each year in wasted energy, enthusiasm displayed but never tapped and many 'opportunities' for improvement just lost. Even fewer organisations have come to terms with measuring this human cost and taking action. This article provides a structure to which you can adhere which will provide you with clear strategies to maximise the potential of your most important asset or resource - your people.
Just Imagine the Business in which you work belongs to you.
The quality of the service you provide in business is determined by the quality of your people and this in turn is determined by how they are managed. So now, just imagine that the business you work within belongs to you - the salaries and wages paid to the staff now come from your own pocket. Let's assume that as business expands and customer loyalty improves your service is perceived as high 'value added', resulting in success reflected in increased profits, personal gain and satisfaction. Now consider that conversely if the service you offer is less than attractive, resulting in poor customer retention, this would result in a contraction in your business, significant personal loss and perhaps even business failure and bankruptcy. Bearing these scenarios in mind ask yourself the following questions;
To truly reap the benefits of getting the most from our people the task is to get them to agree at least that they do have some degree of responsibility for influencing how others undertake their work. Once we agree on the fact that people should help others, either in a managerial or coaching context, then we can start selling the idea that managing and leading people is a deliberate process - which can be learned and improved over time. And more importantly, it is the responsibility of every manager to help each of his or her team to excel and achieve their best.
Achieving Results through Others
People are the most important resource a company has to employ to meets its objectives. How people are managed or led is critical in generating value added to any business. I would like to think that the key role of anyone who manages people is to achieve results through the capabilities and skills of their people, and I wonder how frequently managers or the top team of an organisation really see themselves in investing in the future of the business by developing their staff.
Providing education and improving the requisite skills, knowledge and attitudes of staff is critical for any business but how often are people equipped just with the knowledge to perform the technical or administrative aspects of their work, to the detriment of being developed to be keen to deliver beyond the extra mile. Investing in people is sometimes taken for granted or 'given' and not viewed as a capital investment to the business impacting upon its results and customer service. And a note on the role of education. This does not refer solely to training - and although training can be a useful and powerful method of change it is not always the most appropriate. Coaching, mentoring, one on one interventions, guided study, open learning, action learning and experiential learning are extremely powerful approaches to developing the individual.
Ask yourself the following three questions to really get to grips with the potential issues and (each of these areas has further comment to stimulate thought).
1. What do your staff do when they are not working for you?
By understanding the motivational drive of all staff who work with you and seeing the individual as a 'whole person' is extremely important. Individuals have a major contribution to make and can stimulate innovative solutions to improve current performance of any business - as long as there is a culture which enables rather than hinders it taking place.
Managers thinking first and then asking what are the talents that staff bring to work requires an enquiring mind. But more importantly it requires a focus on doing something about it. It requires some form of implementation. This means thinking of innovative ways to apply the repertoire of abilities and competencies of people at all levels within the business. It requires managers deliberately focusing attention on what drives each of their people to express innovative ideas and practises.
My experience is that people develop certain skills in context and apply their skills solely or often in 'context specific' situations. For instance, the member of the 'Debating Society' will seek to improve his methods of communication and influence by attending the weekly 'Debating Society' sessions - continually applying and improving techniques all the time. But, back in the organisation, in normal working hours, these skills are not applied or practised and these abilities remain untapped. On initial examination,, the job role may indicate that there is little opportunity to use this skill in a specific role - but the question should be asked: how can we as an organisation make best use of this person's talents? What concerns me most is that when running Cultural Change Workshops and selling the message of maximising potential', many managers are generally unaware of the abilities and experience of their staff - which may indicate do they have any interest in their staff at all.
2. How do staff demonstrate their resourcefulness when they are engaged in other activities not associated with work?
In whatever capacity staff are employed they will possess many capabilities outside their defined work role. This may be linked to their career or job that they were engaged in before joining your organisation. What value or contribution could they make which may help, based upon their experience to improve the performance of your business.
Often a member of staff at work will have little opportunity to expand his horizon of activities. Yet she or he may have a great need to take charge and influence events. What we often witness, when we find out what occupies people's time outside work is people volunteering to organise events and take on quite formidable responsibilities. I talked with a shop worker who was also the Director of a Voluntary Organisation committed to community welfare issues. The talents she displayed in her role, organising voluntary and unpaid staff, managing a tight budget, winning support from the local community and negotiating for funds with local and central Government agencies was probably never applied, tested or thought relevant for her paid employment. What a waste of talent and experience.
3. Have we ever developed a full audit of our staff to assess their experience other than with the organisation?
What experience and knowledge have people acquired when working in other environments which will help us shape our business? Working with a very large sales organisation in the Insurance business I ask how often the company benchmarked the practise of their key competitors. A fairly non committal response indicated they did not. We immediately set up a team of Sales Staff examining the following;
- What training was given to staff on joining the business?
- Who provided the training and what were the key issues, products and markets where attention was focused?
- What models were used to conceptualise the 'how to' sell process.
- What closing techniques were used?
- To what Sales Guru did they attribute their sales model and what techniques were most powerful?
- How were Sales organised in other companies? Was it by Region, type of customer, product?
- How were people managed and what was the span of control?
- What were the emerging issues which competitors' Sales staff have to address in the next 6 months?
By working through this process the Sales Team did very little work in having to go outside their immediate circle of colleagues simply because so many of the larger team had worked for competitors and knew the systems and processes and techniques used on a day to day basis. On investigation, many Sales staff even had old copies of Training Manuals they had used on their previous jobs highlighting the emphasis of development activities. All this was very powerful for the business and the information was free. It just had to be unlocked!
So much information was currently available but hidden from view because no one had asked the right questions. The power of questions will generate untold returns. In this example staff were constrained by their 'proximity to the most recent experience' or job to value or understand that much of what other competitors were doing may work for you as well as for them.
Just answering the three basic questions above is powerful in understanding that we do not really capture the potentiality of our staff and their experience . What we require to do is start looking at what staff could achieve if developed to move beyond their current capabilities and experience.
Issues on Development
- Exposure to Knowledge is not enough
Simple exposure to ideas and knowledge is not enough. For development to work it is critical that staff see benefits or establish a need for acquiring and applying that knowledge or skill in their day to day work. Telling people to attend a series of unrelated training modules may improve their short term recall of information but will do nothing for radical improvement in corporate performance.
- Development activity bears no relation to actual work performed
Development activity is not related to performance standards and day to day work. If the skill is not to be practised in the work environment and not integrated almost immediately after being introduced exposed to the new skill then it's highly unlikely to become part of that person's abilities and competencies.
Human Potential Inventory
Very few organisations actually undertake what I would call a Human Potential Inventory. Many undertake a 'Competencies' review for assessing salaries and wage structures or job evaluation exercises to design a remuneration strategy - but very few move beyond the number game of Manpower Planning and really value and map and document the current experience and potential of their people then plan to enhance it through a structured approach.
The average top team in the average organisation would be shocked to find out what their organisations could achieve if their people were managed effectively and their potential exploited. The results of such a survey or inventory are usually staggering and because they highlight the positive role that the organisation must take to harness the energy inherent within its people. This is becoming a crisis for some organisations who have difficulty retaining staff with special knowledge or skills. Many still fail to see the oncoming crisis and tend to ensure that they can 'man their business' from a market which is in short supply.
Demographic Downwave
This crisis is connected to the 'baby boomers' coming of age and because of shifting social values associated with choice, new forms of relationships other than marriage becoming acceptable, birth control etc. The result has been a severe decline in the birth rate since 1973 . This impacts seriously on industry and commerce 20 years or so later when there are fewer young people, Generation X'ers, coming onto the market looking for work. Coupled with this trend there is a decline in educational standards in real terms, as well as commercial organisations wanting people who are specifically rather than generally educated.
Employers now are increasingly more selective and so much so that a leading retail store in the UK announced that they only employed 75% of the required graduates for management positions because the quality on offer was below their standard. They would rather operate with fewer good quality people than with a full complement of people of varying quality. This trend may be industry specific this trend is but generally speaking HR professionals are talking increasingly about the dearth of good quality candidates on the market for a variety of positions at different levels. Recently, I was involved with aiding the recruitment and selection of an Operations Director. for a major business There were more than 200 replies to an advert in the Times - but too few of those applying had the qualifications, the experience and the drive to benefit the business. The company was lucky to find six suitable candidates for interview and of these only three showed up on the day because others had been offered positions in other companies.
This is a common occurrence in many organisations. There is a sharp deficit between demand and supply for good quality staff and a pointer indicating that organisations need to develop innovative strategies to attract the excellent candidates - and develop their incumbent staff.
Demography Impacting upon Corporate Performance.
The key issue here is that there appears to be fewer people available to choose from, which means that organisations and companies are competing head on for quality candidates. So there is a crisis in many industries and many business sectors. The quality of the staff in critical positions in these businesses will determine the results they achieve. What must be remembered is that organisations are not competing only in their own industry, they may be competing with very many different organisations for the same people.
The implication of this competition is that good quality and high calibre candidates are in short supply and now have the pick of the 'quality' employers. Increasingly, we are finding that the candidates for key positions in businesses are very demanding and will only commit to a business where they feel they will be able to enhance their experience and display their creativity, and be given opportunity to grow.
In recent months I have been asked by several companies for;
- Candidates to fulfil the role of Service Quality Director.
- Sales staff who can interact, influence and sell Insurance Services - of which there is a huge demand across the whole industry.
- Managers to lead cross functional teams in Financial Service Sales, Customer Focused Teams in Banks, Managers to lead technical services, and good IT Managers focused upon implementation.
The recruiting companies had experienced major problems recruiting staff and the problem can be further exacerbated because of regional or commercial demand in one or several areas. This is a big issue which many organisations have not confronted
Currently, we see this becoming a major problem in organisations and becoming a critical issue as we move into the first decade of the next Century. This trend is emerging throughout the UK, Europe and North America. What is very concerning is that there are several issues which top teams need to address and they include;
- Some organisations are still not aware of the decline in the supply of good quality candidates available in the market.
- Some organisations are not aware of how to attract the right calibre of people.
- Many have not grasped the opportunities and developed the conditions which have to be created in order for candidates first to be attracted to the business and secondly retained beyond an initial bedding down period.
- Retention through meaningful career development is critical. If opportunities are not created for advancement and experience building, then candidates will find other employers who are willing to offer them such opportunities.
For instance, in recent years the following practises are becoming clear in forming employment relationships.
- In the Oil industry, some employers are offering employment terms to successful candidates of at least two foreign placements. This is to boost the international experience of their newly appointed graduate trainees - all this within the eighteen months of employment.
- Financial Services firms are offering opportunities to learn languages and undertake MBA's sponsored by the business.
- Home working with the provision of PC, telecommunications and all required technology to part time staff in a variety of businesses.
What is apparent is that those organisations who truly value the contribution of core staff have had to develop innovative policies to generate sufficient interest in their companies - just to attract the attention of candidates - never mind their retention which is another issue.
Where does our Organisation stand in Mastering the Potential Stakes?
There are some key issues which need to be resolved in order to project the importance of tackling the issue of Mastering the Potential of staff and the exercise which follows is critical for any top team to complete. I use a variant of this exercise all the time, together with other tools and techniques, to generate some very powerful results.
There follows an analysis that can be conducted on the organisational level, at a functional or departmental or a team level. I have even used it when we appraised the gap between the competencies which are currently displayed in a Re-Engineered Customer Focus Process to help identify how to bridge the gap between those 'now' competencies and future requirements.
List all the people you are going to assess and agree on the core competencies in a general sense. This may include their current knowledge, their ability to develop the required experience, their current motivation and other circumstances. Now appraise them on a scale of current performance which is illustrated on the horizontal scale in the diagram below. You may want to rely on your judgement and use a 1-10 scale with 10 as high degree of competence.
Now comes the interesting part - here you will have to make some subjective assessments and use your experience and judgement. You have to decide where would you place these same people in terms of their potential contribution to the business. Here the vertical scale runs up the page from bottom to top with the same 1-10 scale. Now you have two co-ordinates and can plot each individual on the grid. This is a very simple and also a subjective assessment but the important point is;
This has managers express their real views on staff within the business. It's better to discuss subjective perceptions and then agree objective criteria for further debate. We have now arrived at a method of assessing how people fit into the four quadrant model. This can be applied within an organisation, at various levels and promotes some interesting questions and decisions about the action needed to go forward.
High Potential
Current Performance Low
PROBLEM CHILDREN
“Still needs guidance and support to become a high flyer. Full of energy and drive – but needs constant coaching. If left to its own devices could become Deadwood”
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High Potential
Current Performance High
HIGH FLYER
“They have evolved from the Backbone and the New Shoots. They are excellent at what they do. Rising early, as high flyers they are in control.”
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Low Potential
Current Performance Low
DEADWOOD
“ Decisions need to be made about whether these people want to contribute. Those in this quadrant are slow and apt to not want to make the effort to change. Too much Deadwood is seriously hazardous to your organisation. Encourage them to work for your competitors!”
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Low Potential,
Current Performance High
BACKBONE
“These are the mainstays of the business – work well in teams, fly in formation as a chevron across the organisation. Good Flyers – their development has probably been over-looked by others – need some enthusiasm and investment in them to join the high flyers.”
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Deadwood
An unfortunate term which implies a person is performing below requirements and does not appear to have potential for the future. Some issues are obvious - why are they defined as Deadwood and deemed to be little value to the organisation? I firmly believe that you get the staff you deserve. So if you have identified a sizeable number of such staff why are they there and why has action not been taken before? Why have those running the organisation taken the requisite action? What steps do need to be taken to ensure that the person satisfies at least the basic criteria of the job? There are a variety of issues which must be debated. Does the person have the requisite administrative or technical knowledge but lacking in other skill areas? What specifically lets them down and what can you do now to help them meet the criteria of acceptable performance?
There is a further need to explore the perceptions shared by others and to agree objective criteria which would indicate why the individual fits in the lower left hand quadrant. (Please note that this is important for all four positions of the grid).
The 'Problem Children'
The 'Problem Children' are usually people who have moved to new positions or their role may have changed - but they have not! These people may or may not realise that they can no longer depend solely upon their technical specialism or administrative capabilities - they may be lost in their role. Re-equipping staff with other capabilities to stretch beyond the 'technical' is the issue. So the signs to focus on are the staff who have not made the transition. This could include staff who have just been promoted or who have changed their job and are ill prepared to deal with their new role.
In the 70's many staff who were the 'Backbone' of the business suddenly became 'Problem Children' because new technology had been introduced, their role had changed, and minimal support was given to help drive them up the learning curve.
Also people with a highly technical background sometimes fit within this quadrant especially when they are given their first new managerial position. They may realise that they need to develop new skills and abilities but there may be a disconnect between the time needed to learn new skills and actually doing the job. The result is they have to learn 'on the job' which can be extremely frustrating. This is also probably one of the most powerful stressors in modern life - ill preparing people for a change in their role. The abilities to do a new job or fulfil a new role well do not materialise by magic.
If time is invested in 'Problem Children' then they will flourish. If it is not, they may revert to the limits of their technical or operational background. If totally neglected they will fall into the 'Deadwood' are and probably display little interest in their job and will either stay in their job because they cannot find anything else, or stay in the job and perform at a minimum standard.
98% of people Come to Work to Do a Good Job
At this stage people who manage others must realise that the skills and motivations displayed by their team are a reflection on the management style of their boss. No one wants to be seen as 'Deadwood' or a 'Problem Child' - we need a positive image of ourselves. I believe this happens to people because others fail to clarify expectations and then resource the required development. I believe the vast majority of people come to work to do a good job. No one wants to be branded below standard but if managers took their role seriously in developing their people, then staff who were under performing would be 100% aware. I have no doubt that when most people are told that they are not performing the vast majority of them take decisive action to improve.
To summarise, if there are performance issues they should be addressed by communication, coaching and honestly feeding back bad news. Once people are aware of what is required of them most will commit to improve.
The Backbone
These people have extensive experience which takes them outside of their technical comfort zone. They have stretched and work across boundaries. They have learnt to do things in different ways and probably work with others from different areas. They may never be real high Flyers but they are dependable, trustworthy and an asset to the business and their colleagues. How they have developed is of high value and if developed further could move up to the 'High Flyer' quadrant. The problem is that if there are too many staff in this category - the organisation may stagnate.
There are too many organisations where there is a plethora of such people in this quadrant. It indicates that the organisation is not really moving forward, just doing the 'same old stuff.' To move and compete in the future requires some new beliefs, a new way of thinking that people can learn more, that they can be developed, that there is a host of experience which is part of them which could be used more effectively. Learning does not stop when a person has been in the same company and position for some years or has more grey hair and years of service with the company than their cohorts! Learning to use established skills and additionally develop new skills can move everyone into the top right hand quadrant.
The High Flyers
These people are excellent in what they do. Being a High Flyer can relate to any position whether clerical or middle management or in any function in a business. High Flyers have perfected their ability to work with others and constantly look for challenges in what they do. All staff have the potential to become real High Flyers in everything they do.
The term High Flyer does not suggest an elite group it refers to 'being all you can be'. The diagram and the four quadrants are specific to a current job or role and it is the role of managers resource and support the organisation with the ability to get all their staff into this quadrant.
The determining factor about whether this is achieved is how well the organisation values its people and the direct action coming from managers to cause this to happen and create an excellent organisation.
Cause and Effect - the real problem.
Where is the real barrier to creating excellence in staff and corporations? It resides in the actions (or rather inactions) of executive managers. The cause may be found in circumstances when they are afraid to take the first step and consider the requirement to change the way the way they do things.
The Cause Effect Equation CAUSE = EFFECT
Where are your staff in the Cause - Effect equation? There are those who believe they are in the right hand side of the equation. They are at effect. They believe that all 'they are' is caused by others outside their control and they are the result. Here they do not take responsibility for the process of improvement. When people are at effect - they believe they are at the result of someone else's actions. When they are at cause they recognise that they have the responsibility to grow and develop. Until we can win the support of our top teams to lead and encourage others to take responsibility and be at cause - we will only be tinkering with sub system change.
Summary
It is critical that organisations, both in the public and the private sector take note of these issues - Mastering the Potential of their people = mastering the potential of their business.
People bring a host of talents, experiences, aptitudes, competencies and attitudes to their business each day. I believe we probably only tap 50% of their potential with the other 50% being wasted or untapped - but expressed elsewhere, probably when pursuing other activities outside their full time employment.
It is the responsibility of the person who manages people to get the most from them, but this can only be done with top team commitment and says much about creating a dominant, positive and deliberate management style. Further chapters will highlight the strategies which can be taken to Master the Potential of the most valuable resource - your people.
Philip Atkinson is a Director of Learning Strategies Ltd a consultancy focused on creating cultural change.
Published in the the February 1998 Edition of the Institute of Management Services. This is an extract from Philip's book - "The Iceberg Agenda": Mastering Corporate Potential
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