The Keys to Performance
by Neil I. Clark
What do you really want to know about a candidate before you hire
them?
- Do they have the right JOB-SKILLS?
- Will they be PRODUCTIVE?
- Will they FIT the job?
Job skills include their experience, technical or educational qualifications
and basic skills to be able to handle the job. Job-Fit will be addressed
separately. For now, we will concentrate on the second point: How
effectively will they perform?
Productivity
It is a sad fact that, on average, only about 20% of employees could
be called "top performers". Another 20% are really non-performers,
and are deadwood in your organisation. Some of these are actually
dangerous. The remaining 60% have varying degrees of effectiveness.
Some are quite good, but others need to be pushed and directed continually
to get results. These are the ones who exhaust far too much executive
time.
What is a Result?
Every job, no matter what it is, has a final
result (or "product"),
which is valuable to someone else in their organisation. That result
is the reason the person is paid each week. For example:-
- A CEO could be producing a "viable and expanding organisation".
- A Sales Person should almost certainly be producing "signed
orders" or "sales volumes".
- A Cleaner should probably be producing "clean premises".
- A Personal Assistant may be producing "freed time for the executive".
Each of these end products is "valuable" because someone
else wants or needs them — they are things which can be "exchanged",
i.e. the person producing them gets paid for getting those results.
Ideas - Action - Results
The term "ideas" here also refers to what the applicant
is being, or has been. It is their title, their status, their educational
qualifications, as well as their ability to originate new concepts.
Of course, there have to be ideas in the first place, before anything
else can happen. You have to have a "Sales Manager" on
post, with the right experience and ability in that area, in order
to get a sales team functioning well. You also have to get some actions performed in order to actually attain the required results. But it
is also true that some people have great ideas and never act on them.
And they can sound really good when you interview them!
And there are others who can be very busy all day without producing
any viable results. When you check their references, you are likely
to be told that this ex-employee was "very active" all
day long, but that does not tell you if they were effective.
The Traditional Approach
- Reading through the applications gives you the candidate's view
of what they have been, and done. The problem is that they can
make this sound very good indeed. Some even get professional help
in writing
their CVs. Essentially, a CV is the candidate's personal advert.
- Normal reference checks give you another person's opinion of
what that applicant has been and done. And this is also open to
exaggeration
and embellishment.
- And finally, the traditional approach taken when interviewing
applicants usually gives them the opportunity to really tell you
what they have
been and done.
The fact of the matter is that the ideas and actions of an applicant
in a former occupation can be dressed up to appear very attractive.
Alone, they do not give you an accurate picture of the applicant's
ability to perform.
At U-MAN we actually reverse the recruitment cycle. We do not, initially,
look at the candidate's ideas and actions when we interview them.
We don't ask: "What have you been?", "What did you
do?". We go directly and immediately to finding out what results they have achieved in their past jobs. If the results are there,
and we can verify them, we know the ideas and actions must have preceded
those results.
Spot the Performer
Someone who gets results is easy to recognise (when you know how).
For a start, a Performer will know what valuable results they have
produced in their past jobs. They won't seem to have a sudden "memory
lapse" when you ask them what results they have achieved. Imagine
a Sales Manager who doubled the sales figures in a previous job.
Do you think he or she is likely to "forget" that? No!
They will remember it for decades, and will be very happy to tell
you all about that achievement.
Another very important characteristic of a Performer is that they
will always measure their results. They will have their statistics
easily accessible, either on paper or in their heads. This makes
it very easy for you to then verify those results.
Candidates can (and often do) glorify the ideas and actions of previous
jobs. They can make it all sound good because there is no way to
really measure the ideas they had or the actions they performed.
For example:-
"I had a huge sales territory, and I organised it really
well with maps showing the location of all our customers, and..."
"OK, but how much did you sell? What were the results of
all these great ideas and actions?"
Candidates do embellish their actions and ideas, but
they can't fudge the figures. These are definite, measurable. If a sales candidate
says they made $800,000 in sales last year, that can be verified
with their previous employer. There is no escape from concrete results!
Performance Guide
You can easily recognise a true performer because they will:-
- Know their results.
- Measure their results.
- Be able to prove their results.
They will also be easy to interview along this line. Their answers
will be simple, direct and fast. If they "can't remember" their
results, or if they try to convince you that it was all very complex,
forget it! They are not a performer. By these criteria you will know
them.
Performers
Did you ever work with someone who needed no
supervision, no directing and no pushing. They just got on with it, achieving the desired results?
What a joy that is!
The first thing about such people is that they can envision the
end results, before they start. It doesn't matter what the job is.
If you have a cleaner who is effective, that cleaner will know what
a clean room looks like. You don't have to tell them to clean the
corners, or wipe the dust from the window ledge.
A top performer does not keep coming back to management with problems.
A performer will have enough force and nous to overcome all the stops
along the way. They are focused on the results — not the barriers.
Why Is It So?
OK, so the result achieved this time was not as good as expected.
Why was that? A top performer will always ask this question. Their
natural instinct is to measure their results. Why? So they can correct
any bad results next time! They know what they want, and continually
strive to achieve it.
But this attitude of seeking improvement is equally applicable to
those times when things go really well. Why did it improve so much
this time? How can we strengthen that? How can we do it even better
in future?
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