Every individual is unique and is blessed with certain inherent strengths which when put to use in a suitable environment may help him/her deliver a world class performance.
Now, if we were to assess you for these inherent talents and strengths through some highly validated and recognized psychometric test or any other form of assessment tools. Put you in a role which was totally in line with the way your brain was hard wired i.e. complete and absolute match with your internal strengths. There is very high probability that you will be delivering a world class performance at work every day. If in a organization every individual was in such a role where he/she was delivering a world class performance in his/her role; you would automatically have a world class organization which beats the competition hollow and is on the top of the table at every count.
In spite of several advances in industrial/organizational psychology and high degree of predictability that we claim with our psychometric and assessment tools we still continue to fail to create such a world class organization.
I am not against these assessment tools or the role of individuals’ strengths in helping him/her deliver a world beating performance. My thoughts on this revolve around the factors outside of an individual which may have a bearing on his/her performance and thus act as barriers or enablers.
In my mind, the first step on this journey of creating world class organization would be to learn from your best. Learning from your best may lead you to identify the typical traits of your star performers in a particular role and then create/modify assessment tools to identify how closely your future hire is exhibiting such traits if put in similar situations. This would mean that you are getting more of such people who mirror the behaviors of the best in critical situations and hence their chances of success in real world situations may multiply because their thinking patterns are closer to those of your stars. This actually may be seen as an extension of the age old adage of "recent past being the best indicator of future behavior". Thus, you may be filtering those people who do not fit the thought patterns of your stars at the outset itself. Critics may argue here that reactions in simulated situations may wary wildly from those in real life situations but this however may be seen as our attempt to get close to identifying future stars through the behaviors of our current stars.
Now, if we did have a tool which allowed us to slot individuals according to their talents and then helped us put them onto such tailor made roles, we would surely be setting them up for success. This however, is only one side of the story, one critical piece of this puzzle is our local level manager. Our managers have to ensure that he/she is giving all the individuals on his/her team an opportunity to maximize his talents/strengths on the job. A failure on the part of the manager to recognize people for their uniqueness would definitely prevent individuals from reacting in their most natural way and hence would curtail their ability to perform and leverage their inherent talents and strengths. Hence, it may be imperative for us as a organization, to create an enabling environment with the help of adequate managerial education, sensitization and support around improving their people management capability and recognizing them for their ability to encourage individuals to put their strengths to work. Furthermore, a manager must be able to create an engaging environment which fosters creation of more organizational builders and curtails value destroying behavior.
Another lever which we could look at putting to use to ensure superior application and performance is Recognition. Recognizing the right behaviors at the right time is one very critical piece of ensuring that we are getting the desired performance from all on the team. First step in this could be around defining the right behaviors and outcomes that would be recognized and rewarded. So, we need to define the right behaviors which propagate organizational philosophy at both organizational level and at the local team level. Once there is clarity and understanding on the expected behaviors it is time to recognize and create "heroes". These heroes would help you showcase the right kind of behaviors which revolve around maximizing your strengths and hence delivering world class performance.
To sum it all up, it may be said that in your journey to create a world class organization it may be critical to design assessment tools which draw on your organizational learning’s and help you identify the diamonds and it is the ability of your local level managers to polish those diamonds that may help you determine how sparkling they will be in their role given the right kind of organizational enablers to lead you down the path of world class performance.
