Challenge is keeping your good performers

Challenge is keeping your good performers

Challenge is keeping your good performers

Good performers are addicted to good work

Good work is like LSD to good performers

Creating this LSD every day is important

Being able to contribute, having authority to make decisions, opportunity to learn awesome new things, experimenting, taking risks, dealing with complexity, handling changes, fitting exceptions with rules, facing challenges and achieving things with limited resources by working with constraints is very addictive to young minds.

I have repeatedly seen people choose challenging work over pay benefits

People stay back with organization longer for interesting work

Moment the joy in the work is gone, LSD has exhausted, people leave

Money no doubt has magnetic power, but it depends.

It is easy to lose good performers if there is nothing interesting left in their plate

People do choose significantly higher pay but inside they still keep hunger for good work

Also people have moved away from good pay if there is not so good work when money is not that important then

Once you get better pay benefits, it is difficult to come back for lesser

“Difficult” has its limitations.

Great companies focus on “guaranteed performance”.

Some great companies recruit overly capable person than challenge he has to deal, for a safety

They will put layers of guards through heavy process and audits.

This reduces risk, and generates predictable, measurable, controllable… performance

Heavy process is defense against error and human factor

This is good design for repeatable performance of same or similar things

But the heavy system does not goes well with youth who is inspired to achieve

Things are simple, why make so cumbersome with process and system.

Working on one of its kind of achievements of the time is different story.

It is not a repeatable thing yet.

Some great companies have managed to setup correct work culture where challenges drive people. Google, LinkedIN, Facebook… I believe these are the companies have drastically different work ecosystem than traditional.

How do people achieve things as being just humans is more important.

It is important than spending on a heavy defense budget for trying to make things independent of human factor.

I prefer to choose people. Depends on what kind of problem to solve. Sometimes other.

Still in both cases good people are needed. Framework to support people is needed in both. Investing in people works better.

It is difficult to keeping good performers once LSD is gone

Keeping good performers requires solving this interesting problem called “making things interesting”. And this is LSD.

Is your best performer a leader?

 Is your best performer a leader?

Do you have a great performer? Pillar like performer?

Do you have a leader who can take us all there? To the right place?!

Is your best performer a leader?

If left to themselves for 3 months how do they perform? Can you visualize it?

If you don’t feel good, certainly haven’t coached them. Possibly their performance is driven by your instructions not lead by understanding they gained and leadership they attended.

If you have to tell them how to do it, still they are being trained in skills and not been able to figure out what they need to do as ground work.

The moment they don’t need any instructions after “what” is communicated, they are doing well.

Still you have to coach them as they are still managers.

They shall be able to find “what” needs to be done now. They shall decide that “what” and review with you on what even better way to validate their growth. This can only be attained if they have the understanding of the purpose, the “why” part.

It is you to bring this purpose to them.

You have a leader if they are driven by why they are doing something.

They will work out everything, including “what”, “when”, “who”, “how” with all constraints applicable. They will formulate great combinations, will draw multiple alternate plans, will consider risks, everything.

You are failure if you cannot groom leaders at every level.

Bosses make productivity go down

My early learning on the jobs was, "Bosses make productivity go down".

When boss is on leave the productivity goes up by double.

Surprisingly, but Bosses do interrupt tooo often to know something that they are in disconnect with, as not involved directly and can get into dis-comfortable situation if things fail, they have no much control over you if they do not disturb you to know what is happening, a dozen times in a day.

Bosses are afraid and doers are disturbed.

Bosses seek control for to be in charge of their fate, and Doers seek the  empowerment to let them do the things.

We are busy doing things and bosses are busy worrying what are we doing.

To cut their worry they must interrupt us while we are doing the things, and worry what pace we are on to.

Oh god how am I supposed to do anything if you break my flow that frequently.

It is not you don’t trust me, but you have feared that I will not tell you early enough if things are heading towards an uncontrollable mess progressively.

Why will I, I am busy doing, hell, I need to "do it" to stop it heading towards the mess. Please stop resetting my flow so often.

Dear boss, more information gives you sense of in control, but are you really in control?

I know things, little less than you, may be, but I am the first person to deal with real things than someone like you who is fed with secondary or tertiary information status from so many, sucked so often.

Bosses got to let people find out the "How" part if they have decided and communicated the "What" part.

And sometimes let decide the What part also.

When boss is absent, the productivity of the day is super duper!

My dear boss if you want good results, please pretend to be on leave, I don't mind if you feel bad about you are not doing anything worth for your paycheck,...but things will be delivered better and... faster!

Paralysis by Perfection

Perfection is terrible issue as it kills "time to market->test->change->test again" cycle.

Problem is,

we don't know "what will work". No body knows either.

Our only hope towards progress is,

set aside perfection and embrace evolution method which will help us spot "what works now" with our customers.

Most people are scared of delivering incomplete. Why?

Mental blocker, "need to be perfect".

Fear of failure and fear of public dismay, leaves most people locked very long in their nest, busy practicing flights of the sky by just sitting there.

"Paralysis by Perfection" is what I will call it.

This is a state of "very strong internal perfection microscope and a poor visionary telescope".

There are dimensions to this Perfection Syndrome.
1) Perfection to be complete,

2) Perfection to be logically correct or faultless.


Not giving any chance to fail, stems from the "fear". The deep fear of public dismay.

"Every aspect" need to be "faultless" makes perfectionist work at every microscopic level, long enough to be lost by loosing the relevance to the time.

So if you are imperfect, be happy.
As you attempt, you know what to correct on the next attempt.

Most chances are, you the imperfect, will win by producing something available. And make lead and money  now, to eventually move towards perfection to create entry barrier to others by building competence.

It is easy to beat perfectionist as they strive hungry.


I know what you are thinking.
Remembering the "pixel perfect man" of Apple inc.

His deliveries were perfected.
The process was never to "attend perfection in first go" type, rather it was systematic, multiple proposals and competitive selection practice which still required market research and understanding customer and most importantly attempting improvements in multiple rounds.



Something to read if you still think perfection is the way!
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/perfectionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfectionism_(psychology)