The five factors of individual performance (it’s not personality)

I think out of the box, I'm a type J.A.C.K

Managers in Australia love to try to ‘get into the mind’ of their people.  Robert Spillane’s book The Rise of Psycho Management in Australia‘ contains an excellent analysis of how this came about, and the effects that it has had.  One fact that might be startling to some is that the empirical evidence shows that the amount of performance difference that is due to personality is 4%.

Yep, 4%.  In other words, 96% of the variation in performance is due to something other than personality type.

So what are the factors that determine performance?  I like to use the model put forward by Elliott Jaques, if you want to go to the source, track down either Executive Leadership which he wrote with Stephen Clement, or Requisite Organization.

Here are his factors:

Cognitive Capability: does the person have the ability to handle the amount of variables, options and choices the role requires.  This is Jaques’ core concept.   Different roles have different information processing types.  People can get better at processing information in their current way, but they can’t speed up when they’ll move to the next step.  That happens when it happens (and there are ways to see when it will occur).   Its nature, just like we can’t make ourselves taller (but you can stunt your growth).

Knowledge, Skills, Experience: a person needs the knowledge to do the job, the skill to put it into action, and the experience to know what to do next.  This can be taught.  While capability is crucial, without K/S/E, capability can’t go anywhere.  It’s critical to note that capability and K/S/E are different things.

Wisdom: the ability to know ‘what will happen if…’.  To put it another way, it’s knowing about the nature of things and people, how things need to be in order to work.  Wisdom can be learned through listening, trying, learning then listening again.

Values: not values as in honesty, loyalty etc. but values as in what a person is interested in.  Do they like doing this type of work?  Because if they don’t, they will gradually lose interest.  Values can’t be taught, but people can become more aware of themselves and what they like and so make choices that line up.

No Negative Traits: this is the only area where we flirt with personality.  The legendary Peter Drucker and Jaques see eye-to-eye here, as does Robert Spillane referred to above.  Personality does not matter, unless a person behaves in a way that prevents them being effective.  And only then does it matter.  The manager’s job is not to fix it, it is to point it out and expect that the person takes care of it.  As Jaques says, people are expected to leave their psychopathology at the door.  And as Drucker says, work is about performance, but it doesn’t mean manners go out the window.

One more thing – the title of this post includes the word ‘individual’ on purpose.  If your people aren’t performing, do not go looking into the above until you’ve first confirmed a) the organisation makes sense in terms of purpose, how the roles relate and who is in them, and b) your own management has been up to scratch in terms of clarity and communication.

If the above organisation and management factors are in place, and only if they are in place, can you then start looking at the individual.

To do otherwise is simply not fair – if  you haven’t first set up your people to win, then you can’t have a go at them for not winning.