The Flywheel

LCD Theory of Performance

Reams of paper and billions of bytes have been spent on the need to hire only top grade people. For those of us who are "cursed" to work with the average joe in the workplace, this means that our businesses and goals are doomed to the dustbin. Not so. My premise is that extraordinary organizations are built by tapping into the energies and will of the average joe in the workplace. Call it the Least Common Denominator theory of performance. If your organization has to grow it will have to figure out how to deploy average employees productively. Yes, if you are in a start-up mode, you need top grade people. But keep in mind that star performers are already gainfully employed elsewhere. As a business with meager resources and no track record, you cannot bring in a star performer at the same level because no star performer will sign-up to do a similar job with higher risk. Secondly, even if someone does come on board, since this is a new job in a new company, there is no guarantee he or she will deliver as per your expectations. It appears that you are caught in a rock and hard place isn't it? It seems that in order for you to succeed, you need a fair amount of luck so you will find the right star performer at the right time or that the industry you are in will take off and you can hang on for the ride with your team of average employees.
I struggled a lot with this dilemma for the past 1 year. I kept moaning about the quality of the people I was given to make the turnaround happen. But the truth has a way of sneaking from behind and biting you in the butt. As the year drew to a close, I realized that at the end of day, as the leader, I am responsible to make the company work. Now I can leave this critical element of the success formula to luck or I can do something about this. That something is what I call the LCD theory of Performance.

This whole model of hire great people reminds me of the Nature vs. Nurture debate. Just as Nature proponents argue that our genetic makeup defines us to a great extent, the Great People theory argues that the company is defined by the quality of its hires. I do not agree with such a stark and strong assertion. Yes, the quality of hires is important, but it is not the only determinant of company success. I believe that all of us hold an acorn of greatness within us. Some of us who are able to grow this acorn without any support from outside are called stars. The others, who are waiting for the right gardener to come along and nurture this seed are called average. How valid is this? If every seed needs to be self-starter, then there will never be a forest to shelter us or to delight us. A leader’s primary job is to provide that nurturing environment and support conditions that will enable the weaker acorns to flower and grow into mighty oaks. In one of my earlier posts, I held that good performance, like good taste is more acquired than innate. In order to instill this habit of good performance, we average folks need a role model, we need a roadmap. A good leader knows what kind of road map each of require and provides us exactly that. In order to figure this out, a good leader needs to go back to the basics. In other words, the leader needs to have a leadership and success model that does not require heroes or supermen to work. He needs a model that assumes majority of us are quite average. A model that can deliver extraordinary results with ordinary people. A model that is based on the Least Common Denominator of Performance: Intensity.

LCD theory of performance starts with the assumption that leaders do not leave finding the right people to chance. If you do not have the right team and you cannot afford to hire the star performers, you have to create the right environment and support systems that even an average joe can plug-in and feel engaged very quickly. I believe that as a leader, one of your primary responsibilities is to build a road as your company crosses the jungle. You should not just finesse your way through and leave no trial for your team to follow. You have to build a company which has systems that can show the teams what it takes to succeed. A company that equips the employees with the necessary tools to succeed. A company that can build a replicable and teachable system for success. A company that taps into the hidden wells of intensity and passion that is present in us all. A company that identifies, nurtures and grows those little acorns of excellence hiding in us all. A system based on least common denominator theory of performance. LCD theory of performance is that if your company cannot build a success model that can tap into the intensity and passion of the average joe out there, you do not have a prayer. Sure, you might fly high for sometime with star performers, but sooner than later, along will come some dude who will have you for breakfast. Why so? Because the majority of the people out there are average people with their little dreams and little lives. Any model of work, performance or success that excludes them is bound to fail in the medium to long term. Being average does not mean being mediocre. Yes, you still have to let go people for non performance. Where the system should come is in identifying and releasing people whose intensity and passion does not align with your industry or function. The job of the leader to create such a system not to moan about how difficult it is to find great people.

What's your management style?

Mike Smock has an interesting post on why it is necessary to keep secrets. The post flies in face of currently accepted wisdom about being open and transparent;  however, the  argument is entirely correct and valid.
Taking his argument further, I strongly believe in command and control management. Since past 6 years I have seen too many people to think that being open, transparent and empathic will do wonders for the team. My experience is that a lot of people are only too willing to give up the responsibility of decision making to someone else. They wait for someone to come along and tell them what to do, how to do and check upon them every day if the job is done as per specs. I have seen many people shy away from taking decisions because of fear; fear of facing the consequences. Only people who are grounded in reality can make good decisions. Unfortunately, a lot of people live in a dream world where they hold court. All good things happen because of them and all bad things happen because someone else screwed up. That is, they are too busy playing the victim instead of making things happen. They do not pay attention to the reality of the situation or to the decision context. Psychologists call this FAE (Fundamental Attribution Error). A more elegant perspective is the concept of Shih from Sun Tzu’s Art of War. Shih is the power inherent in a configuration & timing of action. In English, this means that power of shih comes from deep insight into each element of task at hand, how they interact with each other and with the environment and when we need to deploy each of them to gain the maximum result with least effort.

A person who has Shih is always grounded and aware of the context in which he or she is operating. Leadership requires this shih above all else. Consequently, I believe that the fundamental requirement of a leadership role is to define reality for the rest of organization. However, this tendency to avoid reality and not be context sensitive, makes a lot of them unsuitable for leadership roles.

What does this have to do with management style? If a lot of people are unable or not willing to step up and take charge, the only style that can work is command and control. That is why, I micromanage every new member of my team for at least 3 months. During this 3 months, as I gain more insight into the person’s work ethic and intensity level, I introduce the soft elements of leadership in stages tailored to each person’s character and abilities. This is where the core values of a company come into play. I look at the first 3 months of a new person’s job in my company as a time to introduce our core values. As the person internalizes these core values, I can ease back with the knowledge that the person can use the core values as a decision guide in crunch situations.

Bottomline is that I feel leadership comes after management. Not before. Management style, by necessity has to be command and control till the team member is ready to live the values of your company.

Customers as strategic planners - Emerging hypermedia

Thanks to Frank Patrick of Focused Performance, I had the good fortune to run into this post on Nixlog about the emerging market strategy of Apple. The amount of effort that has gone into this work set me thinking. For, in some ways, the effect of such a work is more profound than maybe apparent.

Fact: Apple’s customers are most fanatical, turned on bunch of evangelists in consumer electronics.

Fact: Internet & other enabling technologies can help companies tap into the combined intellect of their customer base.

Conclusion: Distributed strategic planning using hypermedia.

I am using a very rough equivalence between hyperspace and hypermedia. Just as hyperspace is supposed to fold space and reduce distance between 2 points by orders of magnitude, hypermedia is reducing the physical, mental and information distance between customers and companies dramatically. Now, more than ever, companies have the opportunity to tap into metaphor of distributed computing and take it to the next level – distributed planning. By actively seeking, encouraging, evaluating, rewarding and implementing customers’ experience and expertise in growing profitably, companies can take their performance to a whole next level.

What is the key to superior performance? Design multiple, plausible scenarios, figure out how to take new markets, figure out how to penetrate existing markets deeper, come up with new uses & product concepts, design and deploy catchment areas for all these strategic inputs to flow in, employ relevant filters to prioritize ideas and prepare action plans, monitor rigorously the alignment between execution and external environment & use feedback to change course dynamically.

What do companies in order to make this happen? First, I don’t think a public limited company can be the pioneer in this. The entire process is too organic, too messy and too distributed for them to get a handle for their quarterly reports to shareholders. Secondly, companies need a specific person who can act as the facilitator between company’s internal processes and external actors. Somebody who can trigger these strategic conversations, direct the input to specific points inside the company, catalyze actions on these conversations and then feedback the results to external actors. This process facilitator also has to strike the delicate balance between control and empowerment and manage the creative and performance tensions that will inevitably arise in this highly organic process.

While a blog has triggered this, it is not required that blogs will be critical for such a process to emerge. In fact, my intuitive conclusion is that some kind of wiki (like JotSpot?) will be an ideal starting point!

I believe that this concept will require enormous energy and work to realize the full potential. But it is not as far-fetched as it seems. Companies already involve key customers in product design, we already share critical production data with partners and customers, outsourcing of business processes is becoming a reality. From here, it will take but few steps for companies to involve customers in planning. Quite soon, the ability to involving customers in strategy in a deliberative, directed and cohesive manner, will separate the winners from losers in the coming years.