Don’t settle for average | Issue #248
How tackling tricky conversations around performance will help your business grow
Want your business to be in the top 5% of your industry? Do you have a sound strategy and goals in place? Are you shooting for the stars? Then one thing’s crystal clear. You’re going to need exceptional people to get you there. Sounds obvious, but it’s fundamental.
Cognitive talent exists on a power law rather than a bell curve – it’s exponential. Talented, engaged A-Players are at least 5x more productive than average. And they won’t cost you significantly more.
Yet too often, our clients are settling for average performers. I recently talked to a CEO about a team member, and he said, ‘Yeah – they’re good, I guess.’ ‘OK,’ I replied, ‘What does that mean?’ It sounded like damning with faint praise. When I pressed him further, he told me nothing was wrong with this person’s performance; it was just that no one liked them. So I told him he needed to face this with a difficult conversation. Otherwise, it would act like a drag anchor on his business.
Don’t avoid tackling issues around performance and fit with your team. It’s easy to bury your head in the sand and hope it will improve. You’ll be waiting a long time. If you’re serious about growing your business, you must better face these conversations head-on.
E253 | Harnessing The Power of Storytelling To Drive Change with Greg Orme
This week on The Melting Pot, we learned from speaker and award-winning author, Greg Orme. Greg was the founding CEO of London Business School’s Centre for Creative Business. He was named one of HR Magazine’s Most Influential Thinkers in 2022. His book The Human Edge, how curiosity and creativity are your superpowers in the digital economy, won Business Book of The Year 2020. Today he helps leaders and teams thrive in a world of accelerating change through creative thinking, innovation, and entrepreneurial spirit.
In this episode, Greg talks about the four pillars of his book, The Human Edge. What does it mean to drive psychological safety and performance in an organisation? He talks about leadership and why it’s so important for them to have purpose and be able to create purpose in an organisation. Leaders can help foster creativity, curiosity, collaboration, and communication. Also, he discusses the importance of storytelling to drive change, and that is the antithesis of crafting a PowerPoint deck and ‘cascading’ it down through the business.
Fantastic conversation with Greg. Download and listen to learn more.
Recommended Podcasts
When It Feels Like Driving a Ferrari In The Fog
Dominic Monkhouse joins the Secrets of The High Demand Coach podcast with Scott Ritzheimer to share how he uses frameworks that can be applied to any business sector and have helped his clients in the UK, Ireland, America, Australia and the Philippines.
Recommended Articles
Are You Spending Too Much in Order to Grow? Check This Chart
The chart, produced by Winning by Design, plots some well-known companies along an X-Y axis that shows their reported growth rate along the bottom and their reported investment in marketing and sales along the side.
28 Questions to Ask Your Boss in Your One-on-Ones
Good one-on-one meetings between managers and their direct reports address the practical and personal needs of the employee, benefitting their performance, growth, and well-being, as well as the success of their team and the broader organization. However, since managers are typically the ones who run these meetings, the employee’s needs are often forgotten. Then it’s up to the employee to ask questions to get the attention they need.
Investing in middle managers pays off—literally
New research shows that having more top-performing middle managers leads to much better financial outcomes.
Innovation guru Greg Orme provides a helpful, funny and supportive shove in the right direction. He explores the skills you need to survive and thrive in a world of artificial intelligence. He urges you to stop competing and instead do things machines can’t. To become a more human, human. This is a practical toolkit to master three intrinsically human ‘super powers’: 1. To ignite your innate CURIOSITY in a world of accelerating change… 2. To rediscover your CREATIVITY to produce an avalanche of game-changing ideas… 3. To develop CONNECTIVITY to kindle the passion, persistence and insights to successfully engage fellow humans to turn human creativity into business innovation. Learn how to surf, rather than sink, in the waves of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Become an authentic future human in a world of artificial intelligence.
NEWS FROM THE FARM
FREE TRIAL: Scaling Up Master Business Course
We’ve joined forces with Verne Harnish and the Growth Institute to bring you the first European cohort of the highly-acclaimed Scaling Up Master Course.
You and your Executive Team can now try it for FREE to learn directly from the Scaling Up Guru, Verne Harnish, the strategies and tools you need to deliver rapid and sustainable growth in your business.
Quote of the week
“Daring leadership is ultimately about serving other people, not ourselves.”
Brené Brown
MIND YOUR F**KING BUSINESS
Chapter 9. Most meetings Are Shit
| Want to know a company’s problem? Go to one of their meetings. Whatever your business culture is, it’s what’s happening in your leadership team meetings. They are the business after all. Get more insights to make your meetings more purposeful on my book, Mind Your F**king Business. Get Your Copy Here |
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Gallup Webinar – State of the Global Workplace: Key Trends in Europe – 6th July
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Dominic Monkhouse
Dominic offers business coaching and management development, strategy planning and organisational change, using tried and tested methods to launch your organisation onto an unparalleled growth trajectory. His programme is a function of his broad experience, his deep expertise and a proven process used by over 2,700 firms worldwide.