How do you know what you know?

Guess which of the following cities has the larger population

a) Cairo or Alexandria
b) Kano or Johannesburg
c) Ibadan or Nairobi
d) Johannesburg or Dakar
e) Tripoli or Addis Ababa
f) Dar es Salaam or Soweto

The answers are a) Cairo , b) Kano, c) Ibadan, d) Dakar e) Addis Ababa, and f) Dar es Salaam.

How did you do? If you are like me and don't know a lot about African geography, you probably didn't do so well. Guessing randomly should have produced three correct answers (since there is a 50/50 chance). But many people do worse. In fact, it would not be surprising if you only got one right, Cairo versus Alexandria. So if you weren't really guessing randomly, what influenced your answer? If you are like most people, in the absence of knowing the answer, you chose the choice that was most familiar.

Gerd Gigerenzer, the director of the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin conducted such an experiment with his students. Instead of using African cities, he used US cities. Gigerenzer's results were similar – students tended to choose the cities that sounded the most familiar.

Here's another example from a recent episode of Jeopardy, "What country, with 104 reactors, has the most nuclear reactors in the world"

You are at an advantage since you know that I am up to something. You are probably trying to fight off your urge to say "France" (but it did pop into your head for a second, didn't it?). But, the Jeopardy contestants weren't so lucky. Two of them guessed France. I've asked about 100 people since first hearing the question. Almost everyone has said France. A few people (and the Jeopardy winner) have gotten the right answer, The United States.

This is another example of familiarity tricking our brain. In this case it's not about being more familiar with the United States or France. Rather, it is being more familiar with associations of nuclear power with each of those countries. We tend to read and hear a lot about how much France is doing with nuclear energy. We also tend to hear criticism about the U.S. being far behind. Both of those statements might be true. However, when you consider the size of the United States relative to France and remember that nuclear reactors are also used for military purposes, it's not hard to believe that the U.S. can have more reactors but still be "behind" in the use of the technology. The problem is that because our brain is so quick to grasp the familiar, we often don't think through those other issues.

As leaders, we are constantly making decisions on imperfect data. We are also filtering volumes of information from our bosses, our customers, our people, and the media. Inevitably certain patterns start to emerge. It's our job to ensure that those familiar patterns are not clouding our judgments.

A few tips for avoiding the "familiarity" trap

1. Ask yourself, "how much do I really know about this?"(whatever "this" may be) If the answer is "not much" – do some research.
2. Ask yourself, "Do I understand the alternatives?"
3. Validate your sources especially when your sole source is what you "think"
4. When choosing among several options, make sure to find data that supports and contradicts each one. Then make your decision.
5. Surround yourself with people who have had different experiences than you. That way, you all won't be familiar with the same things.

So, how are we going to measure that?

There is an old story about a man walking through the woods and marveling at the expert marksmanship around him. Every tree has a target with an arrow right through the bulls-eye. He reaches a frail old man sitting on a rock. The old man is holding a rickety old bow and can barely stand as he greets the visitor. The man asks, "You wouldn't happen to be the one responsible for the excellent display of marksmanship throughout the forest?" The old man replies, "Yes, I sure am." "Well then" continues the man, "I am quite wealthy and would be willing to pay you handsomely if you could teach me to shoot like that." The old man looks at his new friend and says, "I'll teach you for free. It's really quite simple. First, you shoot the arrow. Then, you draw the circles."

Most people chuckle at the old man's clever but outrageous strategy. Yet, it is exactly how many people develop measurement strategies. They begin an initiative or an intervention and, at some point, decide that it is time to measure its success. Typically they'll look back at their actions and try to craft some type of measures around them. In the end, they wind up just like the old 7man in the story - drawing circles after they shoot. It's not surprising to find so many programs that provide little value despite metrics that are "off the chart."

Figuring out what to measure is actually quite simple if done right. Your measurement should be a reflection of the original problem that you set out to solve. If your initiative is targeted at improving customer service, then your measure should be improvement in customer service. This sounds obvious but for some reason it very rarely happens in practice.

Too often projects are initiated without clear outcomes or goals. I once had a boss who told me to "redesign" my entire department. I asked what they newly designed department needed to do or deliver that the current department didn't. He couldn't answer. I never redesigned the department. Without knowing what I was to achieve, I couldn't possibly make any decisions on how to achieve it and certainly couldn't measure whether I succeeded. My boss didn't know what he wanted. Yet somehow he was going to try to hold me accountable for delivering it. Had I listen to him, I would have found myself drawing lots of circles on trees hoping to find one that he liked.

If you find yourself midway through a project and hear someone ask, "So, how do we measure this?" stop immediately. That's a sign that you are missing clarity in what you are trying to accomplish. Don't draw your circles after the fact. Make sure that everyone understands the problem that you are trying to solve. Then make sure that your actions and your measures are aligned around that problem.

Leadership, innovation, and your brain - Can they work together?

Recently I was interviewed by Steve Shapiro, the Chief Innovation Evangelist for InnoCentive, a leader in the area of Open Innovation. Steve and I talked about innovation, leadership and how our brain can help and hurt both of those. Follow this link for the full interview: http://www.steveshapiro.com/2010/03/10/podcast-on-the-brain-advantage/

Help! Looking for input on my company's "tag line"

I'm taking time out from a regular post to solicit your help. I am trying to come up with a new tag line for my business. Based on some initial feedback, I've narrowed it to two:

A. Your next answer might be a new question
B. The answer you need is a better question

I'm interested in your feedback. Which do you prefer?

What's your performance management score?

How well are you managing performance? Are you focused in the right areas? Are you working with the right people? Are you doing the right things? Take this quick quiz.

1. Divide a piece of paper in half and consider the following scenario: You have just been assigned a major project. It has high visibility, risk, and potential for impact.

• On the left side of the paper, list five of your direct reports (or the level just below them) who you would absolutely bring on board
• On the right side of the paper, list five of your direct reports (or the level just below them) who you would avoid at all costs.

2. Read each statement below. Put a tick mark next to the name of any person to whom the statement applies.

• In the last 30 days, I’ve spoken to this person about his or her performance and what s/he needs to do to move forward
• I have a specific plan for moving this person from his or her current level of performance to the next level of performance
• In the last 30 days, I’ve taken a specific action to help this person improve his or her performance
• This person would not have been on the list (on the same side) 18 months ago
• This person will not be on the list (on the same side) 18 months from now

3. Count the number of tick marks and multiply by 2*. The final number is your grade (out of 100) on managing performance. How did you do?

Did you score less than 70%
If you scored less than 70% you may not be managing performance in a proactive way. You could be relying more on your formal HR processes and less on the day-to-day opportunities that exist to improve your workforce. Managing performance is like any other management task. It requires commitment, discipline, planning, execution, and follow through.

Do you have more tick marks on one side or other?
If so, you might not be fully engaged with your workforce. If you have more tick marks on the left, you might be ignoring your performance problems. While your top performers may be able to compensate in the short term, they will eventually get drained and demotivated. No one likes to work with a slacker. More importantly, people do not like to think that others are getting away with not pulling their weight. If your top performers don't see you taking action on low performers, they may start to question whether their extra effort is worth it.

On the other hand, if you have more tick marks on the right side, you might be ignoring your top people. This is quite common. We often believe that top performers can manage on their own – after all they are top performers. While it's true that top performers don't need as much guidance on their current activities, they need your help looking forward. They need to know how to get to the next level. They need your help in getting them out in front of the right people or giving them the right opportunities.

And, while they aren't on the list, your middle performers need your support as well. They are the ones who do most of the work. Don't neglect them.

Managing performance is a day-to-day activity for leaders. As a leader your job is to be moving everyone from their current level of performance to a greater level. Your actions and intentions might differ from low to high performers but your commitment and follow through must be consistent.



* If you couldn't come up with ten names all together, use the table below to find an alternative multiplier:

Total people on both lists	Multiply total tick marks by
10	2.00
9	2.22
8	2.50
7	2.86
6	3.33

So when are you going to do it?

Nearly ten years ago, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton wrote the book, The Knowing Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action. A decade later, their ideas still resonate as companies struggle to execute.

But I've seen another gap emerge, one that complements the Knowing Doing gap. This new gap is the Committing Doing gap. This is when leaders not only know what do but also commit to it and yet don't see any change. How many people in your organization are "committed" to reducing costs, improving employee engagement, developing the workforce, or encouraging innovation?

The main problem is that tend to commit to ideas rather than actions or outcomes. I think there are four reasons for this:

First, figuring out actions takes time which most leaders believes they don't have. Yet interestingly, allocation of time is one of the best proxies for level of commitment. Too many meetings end before real commitments for actions and results are made. Instead, once everyone agrees upon some high level platitudes, the meeting ends.

Second, actions create personal accountability and the opportunity to fail. It's easy for me to "commit" to reducing organizational costs. It's another to commit to reduce my department's budget by 30% or to start using corporate support resources rather than my own. You can tell if I've actually delivered on those latter two commitments. For the former, I just need to continue to talk a good game.

Third, committing to action requires understanding of what to do. Leaders don't like to set themselves up for failure. We've all been taught to under promise and over deliver. But that's not what leadership is about. Leadership is about accepting responsibility to make problems go away. It's about managing ambiguity. Most problems have a finite window of opportunity to solve. Commit to solving them within that timeframe. Then go figure out how to make it happen.

Fourth, we don't hold people accountable. Accountability also takes time and effort. In any organization, the things to which people are implicitly and explicitly held accountable are the true measure of that organization's commitments. If your organization doesn't feel that it can "stomach" additional accountabilities, perhaps it is casting its vote for what matters.

It's time to change our question from "Do we all agree?" to "So, when are we going to do it?"

Performance management versus managing performance

Do you "do" performance management or do you manage performance? What's the difference?

Many leaders think of these as synonyms, but they aren't. Performance management is a formal HR process. Over time, the performance management process and its associated outputs have been co-opted, combined with, and re- purposed for many other HR processes (e.g,. succession planning, compensation, etc.). While all critical most of these additional processes don't improve people's performance. They are either backward looks to reward past performance (compensation) or forward bets on capitalizing on it (succession planning). But none actually change it. As a result, many performance management processes have evolved to serve needs other than helping people improve.

Managing performance is a day-to-day role for a leader. Its a mindset not a process. Managing performance is about moving people from their current level of performance (whatever it is) to a higher level of performance. The problem is that too many leaders believe they don't have the time for this and simply rely on the HR process.

Before talking about how to manage performance, it's important to dispel some common myths.

Only low performers needs to be managed.
Low performers need the least management. Often, they need instruction, "Show up on time", "Take this training class", etc. Most of the value in your organization is coming from your middle and high performers. That's where your main focus should be.

High performers will always be high performers.
That's true only if they are never being stretched. Your job is to know when to harness high performance to get the job done and when to place the person into a new roles to grow and develop (and perhaps not perform quite as well for a while). Having the same people on your "high performer" list could be a symptom that you are not stretching them enough.

Managing performance is a "soft" skill.
Only if you do it wrong. Managing performance requires the same level of diagnosis, analysis, planning, execution, and monitoring as any critical initiative in your organization. In fact, it's more complicated because each individual has a unique set of needs to be served.

The rewards system encourages people to perform at their best.
Yes and no. It encourages those people for whom your current rewards structure is relevant. But if your reward structure is based on compensation and promotion, it might actually be discouraging the right behavior . (For a more detailed analysis of how traditional reward systems may not work in a the new workplace, see Daniel Pink's book, Drive.). Even those who buy in to your rewards system may not be performing well. Desire is just one of three critical components of performance; the other two being ability and information.

Its time to break away from the performance management process and start managing performance. There are three keys to managing performance. But don't treat these as a linear process. They all work together continuously.

Set clear expectations.
Do your people specifically know what is expected of them? Expectations fall into four categories:

1. Their role in your department or organization
2. Results
3. Behavior
4. Culture/attitude

Do people understand what it specifically looks like to fall short, meet, or exceed your expectations in all of these areas?

Provide on-going, constructive feedback on how well people are meeting expectations.
Right now, how many of your people have a clear understanding of how they are doing against those four areas of expectations? When was the last time you provided feedback on each area? Make this part of your every day discussions. You are constantly reviewing people's work, interactions, and results anyway. Expand your conversations beyond what they need to correct on their latest deliverable and include how their work on that deliverable compares to your expectations.

Provide a plan for moving forward.
Do your people know how to improve? Do they have a plan? Are you holding them accountable to a plan? Help identify the experiences, support, and feedback they need to improve. You don't have to provide all of them, but you can recommend and help facilitate the process. Make this plan OUTCOME focused. Most development plans focus on activities (take a training class, shadow an expert, develop a mentoring relationship). Instead, tie the activity to the result (the performance issue the activity is intended to resolve and the subsequent increase in performance). Assess the plan's effectiveness not on how well the individual executed the activities, but on how well they are performing as a result.

Most of this isn't new. The key to managing performance isn't in the tools or processes. They key is simply to do it consistently and to change your mindset. Every interaction that you have with another person affords you the opportunity to manage performance. Take advantage.