And The PC Police Came Knocking

Well it was bound to happen. Actually had a prospective candidate tell me that after reading my last blog post he did not want to be represented by our firm. That it was “Quite offensive to generalize an entire group of people with that post.”

Well, I thought it was clearly directed at those people who take certain verses from the Quran out of context and use them to justify violent behavior. I have said as much about people who misuse and abuse verses from the Bible. It’s just that for the past few weeks, we have witnessed a particular group of people, Radicalized Muslims, committing horrible acts of violence for what they deem to be a higher calling from God himself. And as directed by the words of His prophet as they have chosen to interpret their sacred scriptures. So, I suppose I am generalizing when I say that those Muslims who believe in a radicalized, perverted version of Islam are dangerous people. Even those who may not “pull the trigger” are part of the problem. Scorpions are scorpions whether they sting you or not.

To be clear. I do not have a problem with Muslims, or any group as long as their beliefs do not conflict with my life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. But we have a self-identified group of people out there who share a very specific ideology that instructs them to kill people in order to further their religious goals and objectives. It just so happens that this is a sub-group of the Muslim faith. Are all Muslims terrorists? Of course not. Are all terrorists Muslims? Maybe not all, but these days, for the most part the answer is a resounding yes. Just don’t let the PC Police hear you say that.

It Is What It Is

A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the
scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The
frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion
says, "Because if I do, I will die too."

The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream,
the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of
paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown,
but has just enough time to gasp "Why?"

Replies the scorpion: "It’s my nature..."



"I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them" Quran 8:12

Performance Part III ... Tail Wagging

Back to the “Performance” conversation. To recap, in Performance I the point was made that the distribution of talent does not follow a normal or bell-shaped curve. The talent curve actually shows a high performance peak that flattens out very quickly to an “average” line that is reflective of the vast majority of people, The Big Middle. This is not to say that some in the Big Middle aren’t more talented than others, but the differences aren’t as great as one would expect if the talent distribution looked more like a bell curve. In Performance II we considered the high-performance end of the curve, The Best. Any successful organization has to have some of The Best. Without some of The Best you just cannot win over the long-run. In this last installment of “Performance”, we address The Big Middle and that group down at the end of the tail, The Worst.

Every organization has A Big Middle. This is where most of the work gets done. We’ve already made the case that there are very few high performers. If 20% of your people are above the “flat line” you are doing quite well. And in most cases less than a quarter of those “high performers” are truly exceptional. But here’s the key: The high performers, The Best, will elevate the performance of the Big Middle which in turn elevates the performance of The Best. We see this in sports and entertainment. A great player will make the average players better and as those average players make more plays, the great player’s game is elevated. A great actor will elevate the performance of an entire cast which in turn elevates the great actor’s performance. This is the beauty of having high performers on a team and having a team where most of its members are able and willing to do their jobs.

Which brings us to The Worst. If you want to cripple a team’s performance, just hang on to The Worst. The Worst 5 or 10% of your organization will do more harm than all of the good produced by everyone else. And if one of The Worst happens to be a key position, it’s a killer. Again, look at sports. Top teams avoid having any of The Worst on the field and certainly not in a key position. You can’t hide one of The Worst. Your customers will notice them, your competition will exploit them and the rest of your team will resent them.

Great teams and great companies work on “the tails”. Attract and retain The Best and get rid of The Worst. Avoid hiring The Worst in the first place and if one slips through the cracks, get rid of them. And face up to the reality that some number of The Big Middle may turn into The Worst and sometimes even one of The Best can become one of The Worst. Deal with it and deal with it quickly. Don’t let the wrong end of the tail wag your dog.

“Public hangings are teaching moments. Every company has to do it. A teaching moment is worth a thousand CEO speeches. CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It's just cultural. People just don't want to do it.”- Jack Welch

Of Course It's War

So what is THE answer when it comes to dealing with ISIS? The entire Jihadist movement represented by ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and the like has world powers running for cover and searching for answers. I don’t have THE answer, but I do recommend that we take a long, hard look at history as we ponder our options.

History tells us that when a group of people becomes totally committed to an ideology that is characterized by dictatorial control and a worldview that seeks to impose its particular form of tyranny on all of humanity, millions of people end up dead. One way or the other, this is the outcome. Communism ultimately collapsed under the weight of its own bureaucracy and failure to give the people what they wanted. But not before millions died. Fascism was defeated on the battlefield, but it took the most awful war in the history of mankind and the use of WMDs to bring it to an end. Millions died.

Jihadism or Radical Islam is now upon us. And it is upon us in an age where technology and weaponry make it possible for the highly committed few of them to terrorize the mostly confused many of us. However this plays out, it will be bloody and millions will die before it’s over. No one will get elected saying those words which is why no one will say them. You can get elected charging up a hill or leading the greatest armed force ever assembled. You can get elected by promising to bring our troops home and staying out of foreign wars. And you can build a lasting legacy by tearing down a wall that is about to collapse. But we are not likely to find anyone willing to tell it like it is today, because it is so much worse than we imagined.

“And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse’s bridle, for 1,600 stadia.” – Revelation 14:20 (ESV)

Performance Part II…”The Best”

Last time I presented the idea that human performance is not represented in the classic Bell curve or normal distribution. In fact, studies have shown that the majority of people are “average” and there’s not much difference between those in the “big middle”. Assuming you have a reasonably competent “big middle”, organizational success tends to be driven by working on the “tails”. Attract and retain the best. Identify and remove the worst. So, in the next few weeks we are going to address three subjects: The Best, The Big Middle and The Worst.

The Big Middle is the foundation. But it takes “The Best “ in leadership roles to build AND maintain that foundation. At some point, any successful organization has had one or more of “The Best” people in charge. And, at some point, any failing organization is lacking some of “The Best” in key positions. I see it all of time in transportation and logistics. Companies spring up under a smart, dynamic, energetic owner and grow profitably…up to a point. Eventually, the organization becomes too large for one person to manage, and without a few more of “The Best” in key positions, begins to flounder.

There’s no set rule regarding how many of “The Best” an organization needs in order to be successful. Some might argue that, starting at the top, it would be great if every role which has significant leadership responsibility or a major impact on the bottom line could be filled by one of “The Best” or at least someone who has the potential to become one of “The Best”. The reality is that no organization has one of “The Best” in every key position. There just aren’t enough of those to go around. But, you need enough of them to separate your organization from the competition. Note, I did not say that you need enough of them to be competitive. You can compete, at least for awhile, with a solid “Big Middle” of average people who show up and do their job every day and that includes some of your executives. But if you are going to “separate your organization from the competition” you need some of those “Best” performers, the exceptional top five percenters.

“Five percent of the people think;
ten percent of the people think they think;
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.”
-Thomas Edison

Performance, The Bell Curve and The Long Tail

I’ve always found it interesting that we tend to try and plot most everything on a Bell Curve. We talk about averages and standard deviations as though God ordained that all of creation must fit this pattern. We even try to simplify it further by forcing data points into quartiles. Or we talk about elevating the average. Lead, train and motivate those who are below average to average or better. And if you believe in “normal” distributions, there is a meaningful difference between those down in the 33rd percentile compared to those up in the 66th percentile.

But what if we’re not talking about the Bell curve. What if the outcomes do not fit neatly into a bell curve? What if force ranking people and performance into percentiles or quartiles doesn’t really make much sense. What if human performance isn’t distributed normally? Instead of looking like this:

What if it looked more like this:

What this says and what we tend to see in the real world, is not a Bell curve with significant deviation from the average, but a relatively flat line where there is not much separating all those people in “the middle”. In virtually any human performance related area of life, you will find a small number of exceptional individuals who are truly peak performers. Then it drops quickly and levels off until you reach the very end of the tail where the bad apples hang out. Within the top 20% there is a big difference. There is typically a larger performance gap between those in the top 5% and those in the top 15-20% than there is between that 15-20% group and those whom we would typically rate well-below average (whatever average means.)

In 2012 two college professors published the results of a study of over 600,000 individuals in different fields and concluded that, indeed there are a small number of high performers and a small number of low performers…the vast majority of people are in the middle and there isn’t much difference.(http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/21237.html). Dr. Herman Aguinis and Dr. Ernest O’Boyle’s paper was published in the Spring 2012 issue of Personnel Psychology. It’s worth reading and, in my opinion, squares with what we see in the real world. These comments from Dr. Aguinis are worth noting:

"All five of our studies suggest that organizational success depends on tending to the few who fall at the 'tails' of this distribution, rather than worrying too much about the productivity of the 'necessary many' in the middle."

The bottom line, according to Aguinis, is that everything about individual performance has to be re-evaluated so managers can identify and go after lead performers.

"These people will be desirable to outside firms, so success means thinking about excellence and improvement all the time, talking with top performers continuously to find out what they need to grow and advance," he said. "Rating them once a year, based on a bell curve, will send top performers -- and profits -- right out the door."

So what does this mean for those of you who are just trying to run a business that gets stuff from point A to point B? We’ll talk about that next time.

Alienation, Anger and Virtual Gangs

Another shooting rampage occurs and we search for answers. It makes sense to talk about better gun controls. And, we should be talking about security on school campuses, workplaces, shopping centers, theaters, churches and just about any place where large numbers of people gather and become easy targets. And we should be talking about violence in the media and violent video games. And, of course, we should be talking about mental health.

We can point the finger at guns and say that’s the reason the United States has more of these mass killings. But the fact is that we’ve been a “gun culture” for over 200 years. Why are there more of these events today than there were 20 or 30 years ago? What has changed? A lot. For generations families, churches and schools were responsible for teaching kids “how to behave”. Were there failures? Of course. The record is there. Mass murderers, serial killers and monsters of all kinds have been around forever. But, on balance, when families, churches and schools were doing their job; there were not quite so many alienated and angry young people walking around.

Most of these alienated and angry people end up with others who are alienated and angry. These groups have different names, but “gang” seems most appropriate. Whether the focal point is a neighborhood, a race, a lifestyle or a religion; there are plenty of gangs out there for the alienated and the angry. And we now have the “virtual gang” where the alienated and the angry can join and participate anonymously. These virtual gangs are the breeding ground for “lone wolf” killers. Here their complaints are heard, their anger fueled and their acts of vengeance encouraged. A “real gang” tends to direct its member to attack strategic targets and even their random targets tend to have a strategic purpose. The “virtual gang” that meets in a chat room has no strategy. It’s all raw emotion and fantasy. And for most of the members, that’s enough. Virtual venting, emotional masturbation if you will, is gratifying enough.

But increasingly, there are those who feel compelled to act. And in a culture where guns are the most accessible weapons of choice, mass shootings are the result. Gun ownership is not going away in this country. Regulations may become more restrictive and enforced more stringently, but guns are here to stay in America. And sometimes the wrong people are going to get their hands on guns. Just like “the wrong people” sometimes get behind the wheel of a car, practice medicine, get elected or have babies. Those institutions that were traditionally responsible for teaching us “how to behave” are broken. We now feed our kids self-esteem pablum and anti-anxiety medications. The cracks are getting bigger and more of our children are falling through. Some of them end up with guns. We may eventually find ways to keep them away from guns. And, in doing so, perhaps save some lives. But we are not addressing the real problems and ultimately those who are the most alienated and angry will find ways to strike back. There is probably already a “discussion thread” going on about it out there in some chat room.