Performance Principles™

Performance Principles is an e-letter written by Eric Herrenkohl that focuses on creating the business you want by building the organization you need. This is copyrighted material. However, you can copy, reprint, or forward these newsletters in their entirety so long as any use is not for resale and the following copyright notice is included intact: Copyright © 2010, Eric Herrenkohl, Herrenkohl Consulting. All rights reserved. www.herrenkohlconsulting.com, 610-658-9790.

Are Your Great Danes Surrounded by Chihuahuas?

by Eric Herrenkohl on Monday, August 9th, 2010

As I relate in my new book How to Hire A-Players, I know a financial analyst who recently received the highest performance review of anyone in her 400-person department. In fact, she was the only person in the entire department to receive a “superior” rating. While this was great for this individual, it was not a good sign for the company. When only one person out of 400 receives a superior rating, it says to me that the leader of the department is really quite happy to employ average performers.  Hiring A-players happens accidentally in this group.  It made me wonder how long a high performer would want to stay in such an environment.

When I related this to this woman she smiled and said:  It’s funny you should say that, because I just decided to get my resume out on the street and see what else is available.  Six months later she was gone, even though the senior vice president tried to keep her.  It was too late for a counter offer – this young woman was now convinced that she had to move to another company in order to move to the next level in her career.

Performance Principle: If you surround a Great Dane with a lot of Chihuahuas, your big dog is at risk.  If you employ a small number of A-players surrounded by a large group of average performers, take a hard look at the following issues:

1. Is there a clear career path for your superior performer? Does he or she see light at the end of the tunnel?  Is this A-player convinced that there are more and better challenges ahead? Maybe you recently hired someone who clearly has leadership abilities – start talking with that person about how they can further employ those skills.  Whoever the person and whatever the plan, take the time to put your arm around peoples’ shoulders, tell them that you’ve been thinking about them, buy them lunch, ask them questions, listen to their goals, and talk about their careers.  You will solve a lot of retention problems just by taking these steps.
2. Are your A-players paying an undue price by being surrounded by sub-par performers? If you’re not careful, you can burn out your A-players by making them pick up too much slack for average employees.  To some degree, your A-players will always do more than others – that’s part of what makes them so good. But you risk losing your Great Danes if you continually pile on the work the little dogs can’t handle.  Remind yourself that your first priority is ensuring that your A-players love coming to work every day.  If they don’t feel that way, what steps are you going to take to make things better?
3. Are your best performers learning from and challenged by their peers? A-players in every industry want to learn, grow, find new challenges, and attain the next level in their careers.  Peers are one of the most important catalysts for this kind of development.  If your A-players are surrounded by people with less talent and ability, they are learning less than they could if they worked with more talented peers.  One of your most important roles as a leader is to get enough quality people working together that  your team takes on a positive life of its own.  If your A-players don’t have this kind of positive peer reinforcement, it’s your responsibility to find, recruit, and hire better people and add more big dogs to your team.
4. Are you dropping your standards to fit the performance of average performers – and leaving your Big Dogs resentful and unrecognized? Managers often take their A-players for granted while spending the majority of their time trying to “fix” their weak performers.  Your best performers should be the pace setters for your team.  Set standards that challenge your Great Danes – and then let your big dogs raise the standards for everyone else.

Executives often say to me that you can’t have an entire company of A-players.  What they mean is that you can’t have a building full of Type-A people who insist on special treatment for their superior abilities.  However, I would say that for every company with this problem there are 10,000 that pin their success on the abilities of a few superior performers.   Make sure that you take care of your A-players.  Meet with them regularly.  Provide them with the resources they need to excel.  Work with them to create personalized plans for accelerating their careers.

Finally, consider how you can find and hire the next big dog for your team, because no matter how hard you try, you can’t turn a Chihuahua into a Great Dane.

Thanks,

Eric

Now Reach a Little Higher

by Eric Herrenkohl on Thursday, March 18th, 2010

I sat with a group of consultants waiting for a training session to begin.  The presenter, instead of clicking to his first PowerPoint slide and beginning to drone, turned to us and said, “I would like each of you to put your right hand up in the air as high as it will go.”  He then waited as we obediently raised our hands high.

“Do you have your hands raised as high as they will go?”  the speaker asked

We all nodded.

“Great!” he said.  “Now, I want you to raise your right hand a little higher.”

Every hand in the room went up at least another inch or two.

Performance Principle: Most people are not giving everything they can give to their efforts.  In some situations, 80% effort is ok – it is enough to achieve the results you need, and there is no need to kill yourself to do more.  However, A-players know when and where to stretch beyond merely acceptable performance to efforts that make them stand out from the pack and create distinctive value.  Here are a few situations where you and your people can likely stand out and create more value by stretching just a little bit higher:

Understand that business is about relationships.  You can’t get anything done if people don’t like being around you.  Human beings instinctively group themselves as “us” and “them.”  When highly effective people come into a new group, they understand that they must win the right to be heard and respected by the existing members of the group.  Without an awareness of such basic human dynamics, otherwise knowledgeable and skilled people spin their wheels.  Then they blame their lack of results on “those people” who wouldn’t listen to their great ideas.

Seek to understand rather than seek to be understood.  Some people feel they must demonstrate how knowledgeable they are by talking about their own ideas and making sure that everyone in the group understands how smart their strategies are.  However, people who are great at leading and facilitating teams don’t do this.  Instead, they emphasize listening to and understanding what others in the group want to achieve.  A-players are confident but not cocky.  They know they have the knowledge and skills to get the job done. So they put their focus on understanding what success looks like to the people around them, knowing that the easiest way to get ahead is to help others succeed.

Complete the last 20% well.  Architects will tell you that they often spend 20% of their time on the first 80% of a project – and then spend 80% of their time on the last 20% of a project.  Most people are bored of a project by the last 20%, and they want to move onto other things.  However, customers are far from bored during the last stage of projects.  That is when they get (or at least are supposed to get) the results for which they paid.  A-players understand the importance of last impressions and make sure they finish projects well.  That differentiates them from the majority of people who end projects with a whimper.  It also creates satisfied customers who become repeat clients and enthusiastic referral sources.

Think, don’t just do.  Last night I emailed my web designer Kym Costanzo a request for a small update to the website for my new book.  She emailed me back and said, “I made the update you requested but was thinking that there might be a better way to do this. Here’s my idea, let me know what you think.”  This is why I am a fan of Kym and her business (www.thewebscaper.com).  She thinks about what I ask her to do while she does it, and she often comes back to me with better ways to accomplish my goals.  Like most of you, I am busy.  I neither know nor care about the subtleties of website design and management.  I know what I want to achieve – I want someone who has smart ideas and great execution about getting there.  This is true of every job and service in every business. 

Plan, Execute, and Follow Up.  Business people spend a huge amount of time in meetings, and A-players know how to use them to move the ball forward.  I assume most people know the steps to actually get results out of meetings, but I can ensure you that a minority of people actually follow them.  Prepare by determining what you want to achieve.  Create an agenda that focuses on this goal.  Send the agenda out before the meeting, ask for changes and updates to it before the session starts.  In the meeting, follow the agenda.  Ask for commitments:  Who is going to do this?  By when?  Have someone write these commitments down and email them to all participants within 24 hours of the meeting’s completion. Hold people accountable to their commitments.  Follow these steps and watch the productivity of said meetings improve.

Conclusion:  Success is defined by spending your time on activities and efforts that have meaning and value.  Don’t try to reach a little higher on everything in your life – you won’t make progress.  Identify the priorities for your life and your business, and then push yourself and your people to reach a little higher in those areas.  You will become more valuable and stand out in the process.

How to Work Hard Without Burning Out

by Eric Herrenkohl on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Chris Carmichael, Lance Armstrong’s coach, tells a great story about meeting a bike racer who bragged about having ridden or raced his bike every single day for years.  Carmichael looked at him incredulously and asked how his body was holding up.  The bike racer then deluged him with a list of injuries he had suffered but had “ridden through.”

As Carmichael says, this is an example of a guy who doesn’t understand that you have to have some easy days (and some days off) in order to push yourself to the edge on your tough workout days.  Most bike racers have difficulty accepting this and so, as the saying goes, their easy days are too hard and their hard days are not hard enough. Because they refuse to pace themselves, they also are unable to push themselves to the edge when they should.

During this last year, my “hard days” got harder because I was writing a book – but my easy days got harder too.  I simply ran out of time to get everything done.  Then I realized that I had to stop trying to control everything that was going on.  I was getting overwhelmed. Instead, I had to schedule in some easy days to let me recover and help me keep working hard and smart.

Performance Principle:  We all have to figure out how to work hard without burning out.  Here are a couple of practical steps that have helped me do this during the past year.

First, I am doing my best to bring closure to each day.  When I walk out of my office at the end of the day, I am working hard to have completed at least the most important tasks of the day so that I can have a sense of closure.

Second, I am working hard to keep my weekends work-free (or at least my Sundays, I am writing this on a Saturday morning).

Third, I have started to schedule an occasional strategy day out of the office.  I did this a couple of weeks ago, and it was amazing.  I had a breakfast meeting out of the office, and I just did not go back.  I took my laptop, went to a coffee shop, and thought, strategized and planned.  I couldn’t get my wireless connection to work, so I didn’t even have wireless access – and it made the day better, not worse.  Fewer distractions and no email helped me create a to-do list and set my priorities.  I did that planning three weeks ago and I have been more productive since because I have a plan to follow.

So, think about some ways to schedule some easy days into your schedule that will make you stronger and more endurable for the work you have to get done.

We Have to Manage Ourselves

by Eric Herrenkohl on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

In his classic Harvard Business Review article Managing Oneself, Peter Drucker talked about the importance of managing yourself well if you hope to achieve meaningful success. Among other great examples, he described how Dwight Eisenhower was renowned for conducting effective press conferences as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II. His aides insisted that all questions be submitted to him in writing at least 30 minutes beforehand. He read the questions, considered his answers, and then answered the questions eloquently.

Fast forward five or six years. Eisenhower is now the 34th President of the United States. Both his predecessors Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman loved responding to live questions from the press without preparation. Instead of changing the format of these press conferences to play to his strengths (he was a reader, not a listener), Eisenhower tried to provide answers without requiring pre-submitted questions. As a result, the same reporters who lauded him just years before now considered him incompetent.

Performance Principle: We have to manage ourselves; no one else is going to do it for us. For example, I have learned over time that I learn by talking. Literally, unless the words come out of my mouth, I don’t really know what I think. Furthermore, I make better decisions if I talk things through with others before I act. The combination of “learning by talking” and getting the feedback of someone I trust yields consistently better results for me.

Learn how you learn. Pay attention to the setting, situations, and environments in which you thrive and spend more time there. Identify the circumstances that play to your weaknesses – and re-engineer them. You have to set yourself up to succeed.

If you have not read this classic article by Drucker, you should. You have to pay for the download but it’s worth it.

Thanks,

Eric