The best from the rest

Harvard Business Review says: "The three competencies rated most important in the real world are managing human capital, managing decision making processes, and managing strategy and innovation.” But according to their studies; those three were the least represented in required MBA courses. Many signs are indicating that businesses were about to face a massive talent crunch over the following decade. And the three factors that would cause these are globalization, demographics, and pipelines. In other words, this is the new GDP I have been talking about in my leadership seminars, and they are dovetailing to create a perfect storm.

There are so many things to consider and reconsider with the drastic changes happening in the business space. Look at star players in the organizations. Back in the ancient days and I mean the 1990s a "star" worker in an assembly line was about 40 percent more productive than a typical one according to HBR. The distribution was bell-shaped (what statisticians would call normal or Gaussian). The standard deviation of about 20 percent; most people were close to the average, and only a few performed well above or well below it. Today, the distance between the best and the rest grew exponentially with the complexity of the job. A top life insurance salesperson, for example, was 240 percent more productive than the average one, while standout software developers or consultants outperformed most. Standard deviation arises in proportion to increasing complexities of the job. Logical!

Michael Mankins, Alan Bird, and James Root offer some excellent illustrative contrasts in their HBR article "Making Star Teams Out of Star Players." The article indicates that the best developer at Apple is nine times as productive as the average software engineer at other technology companies. The best sales associate at Nordstrom sells at least eight times as much as the average sales associate at other department stores. And the best transplant surgeon at a top-notch medical clinic has a success rate at least six times that of the average transplant surgeon.1.

It seems that in any profession and most especially in the more complex ones; most people have a low level of performance, while star performers are very few. Yet they are incredibly valuable. It is now a world where the difference between the best and the rest is huge and growing fast. The hard fast rule, therefore, is that if you are “average,” then you cannot be successful in today's business environment. Anyone average is invisible. And when business organizations cannot retain their top performers, then it will be a difficult task for them just to try to survive. The opposite of this is when business organizations continue to acquire, train, and retain stars, then these organizations will stand out and outperform others by leaps and bounds.

Now here is another angle to this observation. If you work for an average company and you report to an average boss, then it follows that you will become average too. There is a proverb that says, "Average leaders will always produce average people." You can either break the mold. You can excel and influence your boss to perform well but unfortunately, experience tells me that this is a challenging thing to do. Another option is that you may realize this sooner and would want to move to a better place and work under better leadership.

Consider this thought. When a competent leader who is offered higher pay and more fabulous perks moves to a weaker firm; the performance is most likely to decrease. But when the same person moves to a high-performance firm, he or she will shine and even increase the effectivity.

There was a time when professional success depended on experience, skill, competence, and knowledge, but a lot of things have changed since. Knowledge today is as common as a web search away and today carries a short shelf life. The next thing to consider is that we now live in a highly uncertain and volatile world. Business is greatly affected by global geopolitical volatility, and technology continues to churn out new apps and service that can disrupt industries and tear down legacy companies in an instant.

Meanwhile, leaders need to vie to be the best and not belong to the rest. Leaders need to update and upgrade their leadership skills as they navigate and guide their people through the increasingly unfamiliar business terrain. Somebody says: "Talent today is not as portable than what we think because performance isn't just one "P"; it stems from five – processes, platforms, products, people, and politics – and most of those you can't take with you." All this is teaching us that for leaders like you and me; we have to learn continuously. There is just no other better option.

(Francis Kong’s Level Up Leadership last run for the year will take place on Sept. 10-11 at Makati Diamond Residences (near Greenbelt 1). Register early as seats tend to run out. For advanced registration and for group rates and other inquiries contact April at +63928-559-1798 or register online at www.levelupleadership.ph