Sunday, November 4, 2007

Are You Wasting the Talents of Your Champions?

What I have noticed when working with organisational champions is that often their talents and abilities are not fully recognised and more importantly not used as a standard of performance to be modeled. What they do is in many ways taken for granted by the organisational leaders and managers.

No questions are raised to “how do they do what they do?”.

What is the reason for that? The reasons could be many. One that comes to mind is unawareness. It is simply not on management’s radar that there might be clues and greater mileage in the capabilities of their champions that could be extended to the skill set of the wider talent pool. Another reason is ignorance. In some instances managers deliberately ignore to recognise the skills of their champions. This could be due to intimidation, jealousy, rivalry or other debilitating factors. And there is also the lack of skill on how to model and replicate the specific quality of their skills, their thinking and their behaviour.

What are the consequences of this? Loss of talent and strategic brain power! On a number of occasions I have seen invaluable key people, key influencers and drivers of performance, leave companies because of the above reasons. Their loss has left behind a lack of direction, structure, stability, energy and drive. Vital factors that sustain an organisation and move it forward.

Let me ask you, who are your organisational champions and secondly, what are they worth to you? What do you specifically know about what they are producing, how that translates into financial, operational and psychological results and how that compares to other workers?

If you were to establish a benchmark criteria of your champions’ performance ability what would that entail? What sets them apart from the others? What do they focus on? How do they interact and relate? How do they deal with challenges? What attitudes and behaviours do they display? What is important to them? What are they aware of? How do they walk? How do they talk and what language to they use? What questions do they ask?

If you were to walk in their shoes, what would you experience? If you would use this criteria to develop and embed these performance qualities in 20% of the people who do not perform at this level, how would that affect your organizational performance? What results could you achieve in 12 months time?

Food for thought!

Enjoy

Mike