We desperately need more leaders. I am not saying that we don’t already have some effective leaders around us, because we do. We just need a lot more of them.  

Those of you who know me have often heard me say that people who are successful, and who have great careers, accomplish this because they actually perform in their current positions and they can show the potential to perform at their next career level. It’s all about performance. And my consistent message is, “for superior performance to be achieved, and sustained over time, there needs to be a balanced match between an individual’s technical capabilities (education, technical skills and experience) and their non-technical (‘soft’) skills, to their specific work, manager, team and overall organizational culture”.

Your organizational success depends on the performance of your people. Growth, revenue generation and overall profitability is totally dependent on the contribution of your managers and staff, each person having a role to play and a contribution to make. Superior performance will only occur when you establish reasonable, yet challenging, performance objectives at the organizational, departmental, managerial and individual levels, and when you hold everyone accountable for meeting them.

Ya ya ya – I’ve heard it all before.

Problem solving is so much more than coping with mathematical equations.

‘Visionary’ is a commonly used term to describe the incredible Mr. Steve Jobs of Apple. But what do we actually mean when we describe someone as having vision? Obviously, there is the implication of seeing something, but there must be more to it. Why was Mr. Jobs’ particular vision so effective in differentiating him from so many other people? Where did this vision come from, and where can the rest of us get some of it?

Determining the capability level for a position

First imagine an organizational chart, and then within this chart envision any number of hierarchical layers (between two and eight). Dispersed throughout these layers, will be different managerial and non-managerial positions that will require the ability to work with problems of varying complexities and for which effective solutions may span anywhere from one day to several years. As we move from the bottom to the top of this chart, the positional requirements will generally become more complex (and managerial) with each higher level, and the time horizons (cognitive scope) required to solve the increasingly complex issues will lengthen. Obviously, the organizational CEO (at the top) has to contend with more complex issues, and plan further into the future, than does the machine operator on the factory floor (at the bottom).

There is a direct relationship between performance and success.

And with each successful performance accomplishment

you open the door for your next challenging opportunity.

“If you are not moving forward you can expect to be left behind”

While recently on holiday, I was introduced to an American reality television program entitled ‘Bar Rescue’.  I am not promoting this program in any way, but rather, I wanted to share some impressions that I received from watching it and how they relate to performance, resistance to change, and loss of opportunity.

Bridging Technical Skills and Non-Technical Skills

Those of you who know me will recall that I often propose that;

 … “for superior performance to be sustained over time,

there has to be BOTH a technical and non-technical skill match between the person,

and their work, their manager, their team and their overall organizational culture”.

I would like to provide you with a typical example to help illustrate my point.

Recently, I received a call from a human resource representative (rep) of a Canadian organization regarding CAES possibly providing assessment work to help in their hiring process. The organization has been around for a few years, and therefore had moved from surviving the ‘startup phase’ to now experiencing growth pains. The issue that they were grappling with was their ongoing hiring of poor performers in one specific (and important) director role. Apparently, they had hired a few people who did not perform.