Are you missing out on half the potential value of tackling your most difficult challenges? Surprisingly, many organizations are! And the reason for this is a performance blindspot; one which conceals untapped opportunities right in front of them.
Business is all about challenges – corporate and personal
Imagine you are facing a major challenge! Perhaps an unexpected deficit, a market issue, a crisis, or a huge new opportunity? But it is important – and it demands a cross-functional team to tackle it effectively. How do you select the team members? What criteria do you use?We all face situations like this, where our choices will impact our future. And with the growing pace of change in today’s business landscape, we encounter such situations increasingly frequently. So, take a moment to reflect on the criteria your organisation tends to employ to choose participants for these key challenges.
Over reliance on top talent – a high-cost strategy
In most cases, organisations tend to select their best mixture of experience, ability, can-do attitude and leadership skills. They gravitate toward people who they are confident can deliver the best possible outcome and maximise the value that can be gained.
But who are these people? Aren’t these “go-to people” the same ones that are already overwhelmed with their current responsibilities? Yes, they are stretched thin, and while cloning them would be ideal, that’s not possible.
Unfortunately, for many organisations, selecting people for their ability means that is, by and large, the way things will stay: Defaulting to those ‘A-List’ employees, until they are no longer available – perhaps due to overload, or stress-related illnesses, or eventually leaving to find bigger challenges.
We get the performance value, but it is at a cost.
Pressure to perform narrows corporate focus
So, what’s the missing piece of the puzzle? What are these organisations failing to see?
The issue lies in how organizations perceive these problems and challenges. They typically view them through a narrow lens, focusing on restoring or improving performance, be it revenue, margin, sales, efficiency, savings, reputation, or customer satisfaction. They see them almost entirely through the lens of the diagram on the right: We have a problem (opportunity); we need a project, a task-force, a meeting; we have to secure our future performance; who do we need to make that happen?The hidden value in challenges – developing potential
What they fail to pay sufficient attention to is that each project and meeting initiated to address these challenges is a treasure trove for development. These environments are teeming with ideas, insights, experiences, energy, and understanding, providing fertile ground to nurture individuals’ experience, ability, can-do attitude, and leadership skills. Unfortunately, this exposure is often wasted on individuals who already possess these qualities.
It’s crucial to understand that these projects and meetings don’t just shape the outcome; they also shape the individuals involved – while the people work on the problem, the problem works on the people. In this way, they contribute to both enhancing performance and nurturing potential. The diagram on the left illustrates this concept.Developing potential through these endeavors holds the key to future performance gains. It achieves this without burdening individuals or exposing the organization to the risk of their departure. In the long run, the growth in potential can prove more valuable than the growth in performance. The question then becomes, how do we harness this value?
Developing potential – more important than performance?
The first step is recognition. By acknowledging the developmental aspect of these challenges, we can reconsider our team selection process. But it is vital that we don’t over-simplify this as an “either… or…” situation. If your organisation’s paradigm has been one of structuring teams solely for maximum performance, you may be tempted to compare a team of experts against a team of novices, highlighting the drawbacks of the latter and dismissing it as an option.
However, a deeper understanding of how to leverage both potential and performance leads us to define developmental goals as clearly as performance goals. As we contemplate how to configure teams to achieve this, we realize that a mixture of expertise and learning is necessary. Experts may not be required on a full-time basis or directly involved in the task at hand. Instead, they can contribute their experience through coaching, mentoring, or consulting, enriching the team and its members. This approach allows novices to develop problem-solving abilities while experts refine their facilitation and empowerment skills. Furthermore, individuals with leadership, facilitation, counselling, design-thinking, analysis, presentation, and administration skills can mentor those taking on these roles.
These challenges, projects and meetings thus represent an opportunity to rapidly advance your people’s growth and development through experiences and roles not readily available in traditional line positions and functional structures.
Balancing performance with developing potential
In essence, every such ‘opportunity’ within your organization possesses the potential to foster growth, engagement, and abilities by:
- Inspiring commitment and aspiration for personal development and reaching one’s potential.
- Providing insight into the logical framework that underpins the organisation’s functioning.
- Modelling a logical and methodical decision-making process that individuals can replicate.
- Building confidence in making practical, constructive, and creative contributions.
- Educating and familiarizing individuals with effective influencing and communication behaviors.
- Challenging individuals with new tasks suited to their current and future development stages.
Moreover, this approach maximizes the utilization of your existing experts, enabling them to contribute to multiple projects while multiplying their skills and experience in those around them.
Building a high-performing, future-ready workforce
The first (and most powerful) step for you to take is simply to enshrine the following question in your process for tackling each new challenge or opportunity: “What are our developmental aspirations for this work?”
Two further steps you might like to look at are: How to best facilitate people’s growth in these situations; and the role of a more balanced approach to development in maintaining mental health.
Author: Mike Clargo | Culturistics
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