Academic researchers and business executives are all digging for the secrets to human behavior. What makes one work group perform statistically better than another?
Academic researchers and business executives are all digging for the secrets to human behavior. What makes one work group perform statistically better than another?
You might expect smart, hardworking people perform better. What is surprising is how few are actually high scorers on multiple competencies, simultaneously. In a study of 300 high level credit union executives, only 8% had an average score on 4 important sets of predictors (intrinsic motivation and engagement; teamwork; creativity; and leadership) that would place them one standard deviation above the mean across these attributes. And if you required a person to have a score exceeding one standard deviation on each of these attributes concurrently, than only 3% of these highly successful VPs were found to fill the bill.
Clearly, one is being very selective when hiring “the best of the best”. But the gains in performance from such a strategy can be substantial. Returning to the credit union executive study, if we identified and hired the 10 best executives in that sample, performance would have improved 95 percent over average executives from the same study. In fact, we would need nearly twice as many average executives to get as much done as the 10 best. This finding reveals that high performance follows fundamentally from sound selection.
As an applicant to i3, a large applicant pool just means you will be competing against the cream of the crop. And yet, even against formidable odds, I know we will get a large number of extremely talented individuals applying to i3. How do I know this? Because the successful i3er is hardwired for hope.
Recent research demonstrates optimism or hope may be as important for success in i3 as possessing exceptional abilities in leadership, teamwork, innovative thinking, and also being highly motivated. Although it may be impossible to have any one candidate score among the top 1 percentile in all of these attributes, we will look for an “optimal mix” that collectively enables us to possess all of these critical attributes within the entire group selected for i3.
Consequently, some will be particularly skilled innovators or “thinkers”, others will be known as implementers or “doers”, and even others will be strong teamplayers or “smoothers”. Some will be from one region of the country, others from another. But collectively, this will be a very talented group, one that has extremely high levels on all of these abilities. This, we believe, is the secret to human behavior and action.
Click here to learn more about i3, and click here to apply for the program.
Authored by Murray Barrick
Comments
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I just attended a presentation by author Don Schmincke and he discussed a very similar concept: that, on average, people only spend 50% of their time at work productively.
To add more fuel to the unproductivity fire, it’s estimated that organizations only use about 20% of the technology THEY POSSESS. (Not technology that’s “out there,” but internal, already-owned or leased technology). For example, how much of the actual capability of our core processor do we use? Or how much of MS Office do we use?
There are probably other factors out there that get in the way of getting things done in addition to semi-effective VPs and on-the-job slackers. When you add them all up and look at the cumulative obstacles they present, it’s a wonder ANYTHING gets done.
However, if you have effective leaders, that can and will impact the others – significantly. The hope factor certainly plays a part. In today’s challenging times, those that would bury their heads in the sand and hope for the best are going to struggle. Those that seek opportunities, heads well up and above the sand, and willing to brave the storm, will thrive, and, in the process, they should be raising everyone else up with them.
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