Pulling Ahead of the Pack…

I know very few people who jump out of bed each morning full of vim and vigor in pursuit of mediocrity. In fact, most everyone I’ve ever know to accept average as the highest level of success and achievement they believe possible has seemed to loathe getting out of bed and to dread each step they take throughout the workday… The first time I heard average described as being “as close to the bottom as it is to the top” or as “the best of the worst or the worst of the best,” I wanted to be as far away from average as I could be! Building a team that consistently exceeds expectations, that 5% I’ve referenced a few times so far, is a sure-fire way to pull ahead of the pack and leave average in the dust, but it will require us to make sure each team member can see the targets we need them to hit VERY clearly!

An article from ZenBusiness.com by Tony Jeary called Exceeding Expectations: The Key to Value shared it this way:

It is rare for anyone to exceed expectations unless they do it on purpose. To exceed expectations on purpose means that you have an understanding of expected performance, and you realize that expected performance is in no way extraordinary. It becomes tougher when you realize that exceeding expectations requires more effort to surpass what might be described as “acceptable performance.” Acceptable performance is in fact mediocrity and mediocrity is usually the norm. The problem is that it’s hard to sell mediocrity!

Our role as leaders, if we truly want to capture the profitability that’s killed by confusion and missed expectations, is to provide each member of our teams with a clear understanding of exactly what’s expected in every area of their performance AND clear expectations as to why mediocrity isn’t enough!

I often talk about the HR Manager I worked for through much of my career in manufacturing. He was technically my boss’s boss but let’s just say he was always very actively engaged in making sure I knew what he expected of me… Whether it was during my time in behavior-based safety or when I moved into a human resources role full time, He was ALWAYS very clear about his expectation that if I attended any event - training, conference, workshop, whatever - I applied something immediately after that had a direct impact on improving productivity and profitability. Most success in the safety and HR world is measured by issues that are, in theory, prevented. If a facility had 15 incidents one year but only 12 the following year under similar business conditions, the general consensus was that the safety team was successful - and maybe even exceeded expectations. For the human resources department, spending less year over year on recruiting or reducing unemployment costs would, in most organizations, fit that same mold. Achieving those things were certainly part of what he expected but he also expected me to be able to implement initiatives that tied directly to improving overall productivity. This was rarely an easy expectation to meet, let alone exceed, but he was always intentional about explaining why this mattered - and that was rarely tied to appeasing Wall Street…

When I mentioned counting steps long before the Fitbit became popular, it wasn’t simply for the sake of looking at ways to make someone’s work easier. This was just one example of how we used very meticulous data to implement change that would reduce the time an individual needed to perform a task and increase productivity - thereby meeting the expectation that HR Manager had of me! In his article, Tony Jeary also stated that, “The expectations you exceed today become the seed for new opportunities in the future. This may seem to be an obvious fact, but many people fail to connect today’s actions with future opportunities.” While there were many times that even meeting my boss’s boss’s expectations seemed almost impossible, him setting those expectations and holding me accountable to them has indeed become the seed for more new opportunities than I can count!

If we’re going to do this same thing for the teams we lead, we will have to be as intentional about setting clear expectations that define the measurable results necessary to stay well above average and pull ahead of the pack. As we wrap this up, we’ll look at some very specific action steps we can each take to do that!