You are Your Only Competition
May 26, 2008 by Phil Gerbyshak
Filed under Business
As a manager, I have weekly reviews with each member of my team. We talk about 3 things:
- What’s gone well (and how can we do more of that)
- What needs improvement (and how can we improve faster)
- What’s the general feeling of how things are going in relation to your goals and the rest of the team.
3 simple questions, but they get right to the heart of what we try to focus on, and that is living our strengths, shoring up the weaknesses enough that they don’t bring our strengths down, and how do we FEEL things are going.
During a weekly review, one of my folks said to me, “Sometimes I feel like I’m doing more work than Fred. And it’s not fair. Fred should work harder. It’s not fair. Why don’t you make Fred work harder.”
Here was the thinking from my associate: If Fred and I are on a team, shouldn’t Fred pull the same amount of weight as me? Hey manager, don’t you expect that Fred, Sally and Steve all are going to produce 500 widgets a day, take 500 calls a day, or sell 500 shingles a day?”
NO WAY!
I firmly believe we are each uniquely gifted with a special mix that’s ours and ours alone. Sure, I expect some the basics to be the same for each person, but I don’t expect the same for each person. Each person on my team started at a different day, has different collateral duties, and doesn’t produce the same number every day. On a month over month comparison, it always ends up with everyone having numbers that are pretty close. Often, as soon as they see they seem to be producing more than another person, they slow down and let everyone catch them. And that makes them look painfully average and in the mean with their stats. And as we all know, stats don’t tell the whole story for performance.
If you’re one of those people who slow down as soon as you get a few steps ahead, I’d like to offer you a better way.
Play full out
You are your only competition. If you’re worried about how much Sally is doing every day, how much Fred is doing every day, why Tina gets to do x and Jimmy gets to do y, STOP RIGHT NOW.
Start by thinking about doing YOUR personal best, every single day. Play full out for a month. If you really are head and shoulders better than your competition (if you’re reading this newsletter, you’ve already shown you’re smarter than the rest of your team), play full out for a month and really set yourself apart from your peers. See what your personal best can be. Ultimately that’s what you’re getting paid to do, is to improve YOUR best numbers, every year, every month, every week, every day.
Play full out and let the numbers speak for themselves. You have no idea what you’re really capable of, and unless you’re a fully commissioned sales person with 100% transparency of numbers, you have no idea what everyone else is getting paid to do the job they do. You are your only competition, so start acting like it. Make today a better day, a greater day, by competing with you, and only you.
What do you think? Am I being fair, or is there a better way?
Flickr photo credit to A.www.viajar24h.com, original found here.
Personally, I find that the people who express frustration that they are working harder than the next guy are never the people who are the most productive. I’ve started displaying productivity data by person in some areas so that those i-worker-harder-than-him people can see that they really don’t. It’s just their perception.
I like the 3 topics you always discuss at your 1:1’s and I think I’ll give that a try. I have these regular weekly meetings too but I have not found a good way to structure them so that everything gets covered every week. Thanks!
Good idea Gina. One would hope solid data would win out over solid whining.
sadly whining is what management listens too.
whiners seem to get all the attention “the squeaky wheel gets the greace”. Once we start shifting our focus to the champions of our teams will the champions stay and the whiners – either stop whining or leave.
I agree numbers speak well about the organizations goals while often times i have found several managers who lie and keep inaccurate numbers of their people.
i love the turn of phrase “play full”. I am posting a link to your article so that the students who visit my blog can read this.
At uni and college, I am aware that some lecturers and tutors actively encourage students to compete against each other~ at learning! Great to know we have a bunch of 21st century scientists who are not interested in building on the knowledge of others, and who do not know how to “play” in life.
I am way too busy to be noticing who is or isn’t “pulling their weight”; why stand in one spot and whinge when one can paddle further toward the horizon…?