Ordinarily Outstanding

I was part of a fascinating conversation yesterday which came together under the banner of The Petersham Project. There’ll be more about that later, for now I want to retell a story I recalled about a guy I worked with named Trevor.

Trevor supported a lot of sales teams when I worked for BT. Sales people aren’t known for delivering reports on time, keeping sales databases up to date, doing performance reviews etc etc, but I tried to help Trevor by being timely and accurate and in return he was enormously helpful to me, and many others.

Trevor delivered his work in an understated manner, I talked with him about this often and he would say ‘I’m just doing my job’. And he is right and he is one of the best examples of someone just doing their job that I’ve ever seen. Reminders from Trevor would be timely and friendly. Mistakes would be corrected and pointed out to you nicely, so you might not do it again next time. Simple, ordinary stuff, done in a thoroughly outstanding way. Trevor’s behaviour stood out also because the prevailing atmosphere was largely toxic. At times (not always I hasten to add)  we had people in positions of power behaving tyranically and often that transmitted through the organisation resulting in people seeming to take pleasure in others misfortunes. I may come back to this toxicity another time, for now I just thought it was important to help contextualise Trevor and the fact he chose to work in the wonderful way he did.

At the end of one year, Trevor was recognised for his efforts with an Outstanding appraisal. In BT we had five appraisal grades: Outstanding, Very Good, Good, Generally Satisfactory, and Needs Improvement. Outstanding and Needs Improvement were like hen’s teeth, really rare. In terms of trying to measure performance, the company had become great at aiming for mediocrity, and of course it’s easier to manage folk if they’re all ‘doing OK’, right? Interestingly, after being in receipt of an Outstanding, Trevor spoke with me a few times about feeling pressure to ‘up his game’. He didn’t want to, and as someone who worked with him I didn’t need him to either, Trevor’s work was spot on. This approach seemed to be getting him down.

I’ve not seen or spoken with Trevor for over three years now, but his behaviour has made a lasting impression on me. So too has the rather slavish way that he was then expected to up his already outstanding game. We don’t all want to be rock stars, so why is there a constant drive and pressure on our people to behave that way?

Author: Doug Shaw

Artist and Consultant. Embracing uncertainty, sketching myself into existence. Helping people do things differently, through an artistic lens.

4 thoughts on “Ordinarily Outstanding”

  1. And there you have the problem with performance management as most organisations know it. A solid reason why we should encourage more people to manage and set their own expectations with their peers. You did a great job of calibrating expectations with Trevor – he was happy, you were happy. Then some process from the bowels of HR went and screwed it all up.

  2. Interesting issue you raise. We tend to talk about high performers and steady high performers, but rarely do we consider the possibility of steady high performers. Your comment that not everyone wants to be a rock star made me think of the members of popular bands who stay out of the limelight and don’t self-destruct on ego, they just show up, do a tremendous job everytime, and go home. Examples include the drummer from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the bass player from Judas Priest (whoops, showing my age), everyone in Nickelback except maybe the singer, etc. Under the radar yet the backbone for the band (team, organization). Unfortunately, they tend to go unnoticed and unappreciated until they are gone. Performance management can provide process to help managers evaluate and develop employees but can never be a substitute for the manager’s ongoing efforts. Unfortunately, I suspect that many managers (and even many HR) have come to see it as an addition to the manager’s job rather than a core function.

  3. Thank you Gareth and Broc for your comments. It is a shame that something that can ‘help managers evaluate and develop employees’, as Broc suggests seems so rarely to achieve this. In most of the places I have worked, as an employee, a manager, a practitioner setting performance standards (guilty as charged), and more recently as a consultant, appraisals and the like seem to serve as little more than box ticking exercises and a necessity to unlock the annual bonus.

    More effort should go into peer to peer work on this subject, and yes, this stuff should be part of the core of good work, not an addition or overhead. And I love the musical observations, I imagine we can all recall bands we like with band members who are rock solid (ouch) and yet quite shadow like to most of us.

  4. Ah …. back to SDDT after a week in the sun!

    I feel for Trevor and agree with Gareth completely. Why is it that Performance Management favours the average (as Doug said at the outset) and yet targets the exceptions at the ends of the Bell curve? Cynical Plush says it’s all to do with the bonus pot allocation but that can’t be true surely?

    For me Performance Management always favours the average distribution even if the actual performance curve of those included is somewhat skewed either left or right. So some laggards get away with it and some high performers get dragged down to “fit the curve”.

    If only we had the mindset to look to raise the average through reward and recognition rather than force the average, then engagement would be so much improved because it’s worth striving for – unlike, for the Trevors of the world, being targeted for being at the extreme ends of the distribution which is rather disengaging.

    As with all statistical curves, blend = bland. Average is just that ….. average. We should look at the outliers, study what makes them great and then bottle it for others to learn from .. or even better, get the outliers to do teach us!!

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