Shelves are stuffed with quote books that recite page after page of clichés like, “Success is what happens when opportunity meets preparation.” In some cases that’s true. In others it isn’t, since success has one million fathers and two million variations. Failure, of course, is a lonesome leper no one wants to claim.
Having bounced around this wonderful planet the equivalent of four roundtrips to the moon, I’ve drawn a studied conclusion that more people in the global workforce don’t know what they want to do for a living than truly do. These disjoints create vocational mismatches. Any time a gap exists between the demands of a job and the person hired to do it, the work output is vulnerable to substandard results. There are three reasons for this; each is easy to diagnose.
Street smarts and books smarts are unrelated assets. People are typically gifted with one or the other; few are gifted with both. Knowledge, defined in this context as “what you know, relative to what you need to know, in order to succeed,” is one-third of what someone needs to succeed. Knowledge can be taught, learned, tested, and measured. Every achievement has tied to it a certain amount of information that must be known in order excel. In order to perform consistently well, it’s vital to meet or exceed that knowledge level.
Additive to knowledge are skills and attributes. Skills are defined as, “the demonstrated ability to deliver the desired results over time.” Skills can be taught, practiced, and strengthened. Attributes are personal intangibles, invisible behavioral traits that make everyone unique.
When the demands of a job match the knowledge, skills, and attributes of a person, sustained high performance can result. But when people do not perform as desired or expected, the root cause traces back to three reason:
1. They can’t do it.
2. They won’t do it.
3. They’re prevented from doing it.
Can’t do its are knowledge or skill related. Won’t do its are different. When people are capable of doing better work than they are producing, they often underperform because there’s no punishment for slacking, no reward to performing, or the perception that the better they are at something, the more of it they get stuck doing. This is “performance punishment.” The typical behavioral reaction to this perceived work/fairness injustice is that people protest by shutting down. They refuse to do something they are quite capable of doing.
The third performance barrier occurs when someone with the knowledge, skills, and attributes to succeed are stymied by things beyond his or her control. These derailments require a workaround, a new plan, or help to remove the impediment.
Whenever you’re diligently pursuing something that matters but find yourself frustrated, root-cause the reason why. Take swift action accordingly. Problems rarely solve themselves, so progress comes swiftest to those who keep plugging.
High performers are different than mediocre ones. Their ability to keep initiative moving is a big reason why.