Lift All Boats

What moves a member of the team to perform above and beyond expectations? Or is that the primary means by which exceptional performance is attained? Movement. Yes, action is necessary. But what is the mechanism by which someone exceeds performance benchmarks by significant margins? Is it just that they’re extraordinarily motivated or is it something else? Does hard work as input always result in corresponding gains as output or do we see diminishing returns with added effort? If hard work isn’t the most significant parameter what is? In my time as manager I saw those who excelled with apparently little expenditure and those who struggled with incredible effort. What gives? I dismiss the idea that intelligence isn’t a malleable quantity (if it can be reduced to a number at all). I won’t accept that intelligence is the primary parameter through which this…except that it kind of is. The reason for the apparent discrepancy between those who excel but do little hard labor by comparison to their counterparts who struggle but expend tremendous physical effort is the utilization of efficient methodologies. The most successful members of my team were those who adopted methodologies that ran the show with little redundancy and extremely efficient practices. To give an example, one member of my team was exhausted. They had just put away an order of heavy goods and needed a break. I understood their pain. I had been in similar positions myself. It wasn’t that this person did anything necessarily wrong. It’s not as though they used improper lifting techniques when putting away the goods or took exceptionally long paths to the destination. It was simpler than that. One other member of my team noticed that the truck driver would often select one spot in particular to drop off the goods out of convenience. The figured that if they dropped the goods off at another location, they could cut walking distance by over 50% (I doubt they thought about it this way but, in retrospect, this is the approximate figure). The next time a delivery was made, this team member spoke with the driver and requested the goods be dropped off at the new location. People weren’t so tired after having to put away those goods anymore. This was a simple solution to a problem. It required awareness. This person had to notice that there was a better drop off point and recognize that it wasn’t being met. This solution is not outside the bounds of access of anybody I can think of. Anyone could have thought of it. Nobody but this person had considered it (or had the courage to voice their position). Is it that this person is beyond the intellectual capacities of the average person? Maybe this person in particular, yes. But the solution is not. It is within the realm of potential of anyone of sound mind and whose brain is not developmentally impaired

in some way. Like I said, the recognition came with awareness. You have to be paying attention to the right things. That’s the majority of the battle. If you know what to look for - if you know where the most benefit can be found - if you’re asking the right questions - it is within your scope. So the question becomes “is above average intelligence prerequisite to knowing what to look for, knowing where the most benefit can be found, and asking the right questions?” I believe it is not. At least not intelligence as measured by current methods. I believe it has much more to do with training. If you put yourself in positions where significant thought is demanded of you, where you’re uncomfortable because the information you have is incomplete, and you put yourself in these situations regularly, you will invariably become better at spotting incongruencies in reality. Then there’s the question of what we mean by exceptional performance. Or performance above and beyond what’s expected. If the bar continues to be raised periodically, then obviously the definition of exceptional performance changes with time. A person has to ask if this is strategically optimal. Does constantly raising the bar in this way actually promote positive outcomes for the team? I understand raising the bar if there is a sudden, collective, increase in effective workflow. In efficiency. The example illustrated earlier describes such an outcome. That example demonstrates universal efficiency improvement. Nobody will be worse off from the implementation of that solution. Everyone will become proportionally quicker. But raising the bar because one person is consistently outperforming the measures by which we’re testing our success does not lead to positive outcomes for the whole. Efforts should be made to learn from the practices of the performer so that, collectively, we can rise up, but raising the bar arbitrarily high on the basis of the successes of one or a small group of individuals makes no sense to me. It will lead only to stress for the rest of the group. The waves must lift the boat and all aboard it. Either that happens, or you let the rest of your team drown.