The hunt for peak performance

Companies used to hire a group of PhD’s to pour over a single position to create a 3-inch thick 3-ring binder filled with everything important about that job. There were a few problems with the outcomes. First, by the time the analysis was completed, the job had often evolved to keep up with new ideas, benchmarked best practices, or the good ‘ol Hawthorne Effect. Second, not even the direct manager of people working in the analyzed position would pick up that thick binder and read all of the information. Third, it was a costly endeavor so there was typically little to no return on investment (ROI). Sure, the Hawthorne Effect (people do a job much better when someone is paying attention to them) was a direct result of the anthropologists asking a lot of questions and observing every move they made. Sure, a manager should read the entire manual to glean tips and methods that could be used to help everyone improve their performance. And, yes, shame on the companies for not taking the steps to make the ROI positive for the investment. But, reality is what it is.?

The obvious over-reaction to such detailed work was the advent of benchmarking. Personnel departments partnered with managers to create a list of job requirements and minimum standards. Those job descriptions were shared so that every company could standardize around common roles. (Some companies created ‘requirements’ that encouraged discrimination or protected incumbents, but that is a tale for another day.) This is still effectively done today when job descriptions are created by copying and pasting from similar job postings found online. The main problem is that this methodology does not take the company’s unique approaches/secret sauce into consideration. Generic documentation leads to lower quality candidates and settling for the ‘least worst’ candidate when hiring.?

Next up, researchers started looking at important (i.e. profitable) roles to identify common or core competencies. Leadership was a favorite target, which led to models with groupings like individual contributor, supervisor, manager, and executive. A certain subset of skills was common to those who were managing their work. Another set of competencies was common to those who managed others. Middle management required managing work across multiple teams, which was another skillset. Executives needed to create the vision, mission, and objectives for the entire organization. There was some overlap between levels of leadership and people who excelled at one level might not be as effective at the next level up. Several companies built models based on the research (and many, many more built and sold models based on their hypotheses instead of any read evidence). There is about 80% agreement across the valid and reliable leadership models and thousands of multi-rater assessments that correlate to performance ratings. But, once again, adopting a research-based model only helped a company be as good as everyone else. It still did not take their industry, approach, culture, or objectives into consideration.

Position profiling became popular once the results were compared to the valid and reliable research-based competency models. It provided far more information about what was required to succeed in the role - and it took an organization’s idiosyncrasies into account. It requires a couple of hours of time to complete, but it provides a differentiated set of competencies that can be used to identify ‘price of admission’ competencies, create more accurate job descriptions, map out a more effective selection process and assessment tools, identify the topics that must be covered during onboarding and training, and create a management tool that helps leaders identify and address performance gaps. Position profile sessions usually capture the exact same competencies from the valid models, which means that at worst they are 80% reliable. However, with the additional competencies that are identified, companies have consistently reported significantly higher performance when leveraging the findings from a profile.

It is not difficult for Talent Acquisition professionals to master position profiling. But, it is obviously more work than simply buying a commercial competency model. Those who learn the process and take the time to facilitate the sessions, segregate the competencies, partner with other People Team members to develop assessment tools and training, and build management guides will be retained to continue that work - even if hiring is frozen. The ROI is clear and compelling.

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