Part 3: Why Mediocre to Average Performance is Widespread an High Performance is Rare in Companies, Business, Economies and Organisations.

A bewildering large number of shareholders, boards, top executives, their managers and their organisations do not seem to fully understand what really how humans really produce the kind of results that they get. This handicap, regrettably, is also widely shared by many human resources experts (including HR consultants) who are supposed to guide the leaders in creating high achieving, peak performing, extraordinary organisations. It is, therefore, not surprising that the majority of organisations are in the mediocre to average performance range, with very few making amazing things happen. It is also very surprising that while boards and top executive teams talk a lot about high organisational performance and achievement; they tolerate their mediocre to average performance and never respond decisively to warnings of the sad state of affairs.

Organisational mediocrity and underperformance is not necessarily in terms of comparison of one organisation with others because this can be, and is actually, misleading because even among a pack of mediocre or underperforming there is a best organisation compared with others. The most useful measure of mediocrity and underperformance is one based on the actual performance of the organisation in comparison to its untapped potential. To this some organisations performance argue that the majority of organisations operate below 20 percent of their full potential. This means that as much as 80 percent of human potential within the organisations goes to waste.

For the avoidance of doubt, this observation that organisations are blowing away as much as 80 percent of their potential is fact and not motivational hyperbole. Performance and results management expert know with a high degree of certainty how organisations are squandering this human potential and are perpetuating mediocrity and underperformance which, unfortunately, attribute to the wrong reasons including the environment in the case of profit-making organisations that we call corporates, companies or businesses.?

The general model and theory around organisational is generally flawed. Where the theory is correct, it is often inaccurate or incomplete or both. I will address one major flaw in this episode.

Lake of Correct, Clear and Accurate Understanding of What Goes Into Human Performance

Thinking that Knowledge is the Direct Key Driver of Human Performance

Imagine performance to be like a cake. For you to successfully bake a cake, you must know the ingredients that go into a cake. Then you must also know how the ingredients are mixed and then the heat treatment required to successfully bake the cake. You must also have suitable utensils to use. The quality of the cake you will produce is determined by the correctness and the quality of the ingredients and the degree to which you have followed the procedures. Any error in these key elements will have a negative impact on the quality of the cake.

When it comes to performance, there is still an overall assumption that the most important ingredients in human performance at work are subject matter knowledge and experience. This is strongly reflected in job and vacancy adverts with their emphasis on “degree” qualifications. Just to be clear, there are clearly some jobs and posts where degree qualifications matter; these are mostly science, engineering and mathematics-centric positions. In fact, in these positions degree qualifications are largely justified in cases where the post requires scientific, engineering and mathematical skills because studies in these disciplines provide both knowledge and skill.?The problem is that many degree qualifications are more knowledge-based than skills-based. This is important because in the real world;

1.??????Skills contribute more to real world performance than subject matter knowledge.

2.??????Most academic knowledge is explanatory knowledge rather than instructional. The knowledge for sure helps but it is not the core of what drives performance.

Surprisingly many people still believe that there is a direct link between knowledge and performance. In other words, they believe that the more knowledgeable one is in a domain, the higher the person’s real world performance in that domain. This is false. Knowledge by itself is not important unless it is supporting some underlying set of skills and, more important, a high natural potential in the area.

Limited or Poor Understanding of Skills and How They Contribute to Performance

Few people responsible for performance realise that skills and not academic qualifications are the real thing to go for because skills are the core of performance. Skills are second only to natural potential in contributing to human performance. Then there are other factors other than knowledge that are also more important than knowledge such as personality, mindset, attitude, motivation and ambition. These primary factors many people, amazingly, either never include them or, if they do, the relegate them to incidental nice to haves. This is thinking in reverse!

Most job adverts are very clear when it comes to academic qualifications; but they fall short in position-specific knowledge requirements and even much less on the specific critical skills sets for a position or job. In many cases, there is clear evidence of cut and paste job in job descriptions and job requirements without any due consideration of the organisation’s strategy, mission, goals and unique situation. Even job positions are cut and paste-chief executive officer, head of marketing, managing director, marketing executive and so on. So people will simply reproduce things and look for similar positions and adverts for similar jobs and use them as is.

Confusing Things by Wrongly Using the Concept Competencies

Many organisations confuse things worse and lose the signal by used composite concepts such as competencies. The concept of competences must be clearly and full understood before it is used in job requirements. This world originated in the army when some generals starting thinking about the idea of an ideal soldier. They theorised that there are set of possessions, attributes and characteristics that define an ideal soldier using this sets they would more accurately recruit high potential candidates that would be able to perform at high levels and reduce the training costs. So the word competences includes many things that include behavioural characteristics, unique?potential, personality and natural strengths. The term has been expanded to also include knowledge, expertise and experience. So recklessly using the term in recruitment leads to more confusion than clarity and hence to poor recruitment outcomes.

In conclusion, the lack of understanding what goes into human performance in different jobs and positions and situations in organisations creates a whole lot mistakes in all the stages and processes involved in organisational design, staffing, equipment, leadership and management. Without improving the understanding and clarity of what exactly goes into human performance at individual level and at team levels, mediocre and average performance and underperformance will remain the order of the day. The situation will in fact worsen given the rapidity at which things are changing and the high velocity vucarisation of the world.

When the rate of external change is faster than the rate at which the organisation is changing, the organisation is doomed. Regrettably the majority of organisations never paid heed to warning signs. They prefer to react when they have already hit the turbulence eyebull that change ahead of danger.

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?Simon Bere, 2022