10x the 10x’ers Concept

We started with modelling performance in a typical organisation.

On the left you have the “normal distribution” or “bell curve”.

This is a common way for companies to think about their workforce. It is used for compensation reviews and all sorts. It has some significant flaws though and companies like Microsoft have famously ditched this way of thinking about performance.

It says:

1) most people are average performers

2) high performance is relatively “rare”

There is an article from Josh Bersin points to some academic research. Academic research that says the model on the left is not what happens in the real world.

In the real world the model on the right…. is actually how it plays out in 95% of cases. The “power law distribution” or “long tail” model.

So what’s the difference?

The first thing is most people are not average performers…. most people fall below the average (slightly). That’s quite interesting right? Everyone gets the same level of investment? Adoption of AI for all?

The second thing, is that the “power law” distribution says there is a much wider range of high performance. Including, the so say 10x’ers. This is all relative and in high performing environments, even the lowest performer is still awesome.

So we’ve taken that “long tail” model and thought a bit more about what might happen if we 10x the 10x’ers.

Investment in AI takes many forms, right.

L&D, enablement, comms, tools and technology… it all comes at a price and there are risk related investments too. Let’s call those investments, bets, poker chips. What we have been doing is evenly sharing these poker chips amongst everyone.

A bit of investment for all… should raise the bar. However, so far we are not typically seeing many businesses screaming about the ROI and improvements they have made in productivity and scale.

So what if…..?

What if we pooled those resources, put them in the hands of the highest performers. Could we see that performance curve steepen? Could we see a faster road to ROI? Through that momentum, do we get a secondary effect of this elevating people around the 10x’ers too?

So what if 10x’ing the 10x’ers has legs. How would you actually go about it? By it’s very nature it is not very egalitarian, how do you keep everyone else on board? What else would you need to think about? How would it work in practice?

These were concepts and Qs we asked of the room.

As senior leaders, with constraints, we have to make some bets, take some calculated risks.

Not all roles/functions have the same surface impact area. It’s all about Impact & Reach

Impact: How big a call can a role/function actually make?

Reach: How far do the consequences of that call travel?

Think about it. High impact and high reach are necessary precursors for10x performance. With the resulting quadrant across those two axis this is another way to think about high performance. As a final exercise we asked leaders to make some bets and debate what types of roles/functions would sit in each of the resulting quadrants.