Hundred Percenters
Set HARD Goals
Introduction
People who are 100% Leaders achieve greatness by pushing past the comfort zone and inspiring their followers to do the same. Consider Oprah Winfrey, the daughter of an impoverished teenage mother in rural Mississippi, who today is one of the most influential women in the world; Jaime Escalante, a teacher who captured the minds of "unteachable" inner-city kids and filled them with the knowledge needed to pass the AP Calculus exam; and John F. Kennedy, who rallied the support of a frightened nation to put a man on the moon. If you look behind the scenes at every great accomplishment, you'll find a challenging goal that tried and tested people's beliefs about what was possible. You'll also find a person or people who weren't afraid to meet, or even surpass, that challenge.
And yet, notwithstanding the near perfect correlation between great achievements and challenging goals, our daily lives are nearly void of aspirations that test our limits and grow our character. The reasons why are plenty. We're intimidated by ambitious, challenging, difficult goals. We run the risk of resistance when we put great demands on people's time, energy, and talents. We fear that employees might interpret challenges that ask for more as an accusation that their performance to date has been inadequate. Tough goals could expose weaknesses and a lack of preparation. And, of course, unequivocal expectations for greatness beg the question, "What if we fail?" And that question, in turn, forces consideration of some deeply uncomfortable choices.
Demanding more of ourselves and one another is scary in an era where Happiology is our planetary religion and "Don't do today what you can put off till tomorrow" is our planetary slogan. We throw roadblocks in front of 100% Leaders who would otherwise test our limits. No goal can be approved until every resource is allocated, every milestone clarified, every assumption tested, every participant vetted, every response anticipated, every market researched, and every skill developed.
We may be afraid of challenge, but ironically, companies generally don't die because they tackled a challenge that was too big or they pushed themselves too hard. In virtually every major business failure, adhering to the status quo was the motivation behind the undoing. Kodak didn't meet the challenge when Fuji attacked, nor did Sears when Wal-Mart attacked. The Big Three automakers have made sticking to the status quo an art form (whether it's union contracts or high oil prices, they never met a tough challenge they couldn't duck or postpone). How many different companies were "status quo-ing" themselves to death when Google first emerged? Or Amazon? Or Southwest? Or Microsoft? Or Dell? Or Yamaha? Or Honda? (Please note, some of these companies now face significant challenges. So ask yourself, are they in trouble because they challenged themselves too much or because they became enamored with their own success and stopped looking for greater challenges?)
Before the financial meltdown started in 2008, we had years of prosperity. But we didn't "think big" and push ourselves to sacrifice and grow. We didn't view our economic prosperity as an investment pool that, spent wisely, could fund breakthrough innovations and solve what we knew were looming problems (health care, social security, a crumbling education system, global warming, etc.). Instead, we went shopping. We focused on feeling good rather than doing good. We counted our resources instead of developing our resourcefulness.
Even the financial collapse itself was a form of embracing the status quo. "Smile and take the money" became our financial ethic. Rating agencies didn't push themselves to learn the math that would have allowed them to actually do their jobs and accurately "rate" assets, nor did banks. How many financial executives sat down and pushed themselves to understand David Li's Gaussian copula function (the formula that allowed hugely complex risks to be modeled with seemingly more accuracy than ever before) so they might understand the formula's destructive potential? How many homeowners built financial plans around disciplined savings instead of miraculously, and irrationally, appreciating housing prices?
Yes, companies with challenging goals do fail. But it's rarely the goal itself that causes the failure. Rather, the failure occurs in communicating, executing, or resourcing the goal. What's more, companies with the guts to set challenging goals that are bigger than themselves typically have the cultural constitution to pick themselves up from failure and start again.
Reclaim Our Heroes with Positive Reinforcement
Here's a shocking finding: when we asked more than 5,000 employees to tell us who teaches them more about the dos and don'ts on the job, the boss or fellow employees, 67% said they learn more by watching fellow employees.
This should make you wonder: what do your employees learn about being a Hundred Percenter from watching their coworkers? Let me offer two very bad lessons that the typical employee is learning every single day.
Lesson #1: Being a Hundred Percenter Stinks
Imagine it's Friday afternoon at 4 p.m. and you've got a major report due on Monday at 9 a.m. This report could derail your career if it's not done right, and you're going to need some help getting it done. It's going to be a tough weekend of hard work, but a deadline is a deadline. Whom are you going to turn to for help: the employee who gives 100% effort or the employee who gives 50% effort? Of course, you take the Hundred Percenter. When the same situation happens again next week, who do you think gets called on to make the painful sacrifice? The Hundred Percenter. And it's the Hundred Percenter who will get the call the weekend after that and the weekend after that.
Now, answer this question: who has the worst job in your department? Say it with me: the Hundred Percenter. There are two morals here: First, create more Hundred Percenters (just follow all the rules in this book). Second, when your non -- Hundred Percenters are looking at your Hundred Percenters, they're probably not learning the lesson that you hope they are. Instead, they're likely learning that being a Hundred Percenter is hard and painful, a lesson that results in saying, "No thank you to that job!"
Lesson #2: The Boss Can't Tell the Difference Between Hundred Percenters and Fifty Percenters
Imagine you've got two employees who just finished meeting a deadline for a very tough project. Chris is a Hundred Percenter, and he did an incredible job (while giving 100%, of course). Pat is a Fifty Percenter who did a passable job (no glaring mistakes, just not nearly as good a job as the Hundred Percenter). Now, they're both standing in front of you waiting for some feedback. Here's what the typical manager says, "Chris and Pat, thanks for getting this done on time, good work."
What did they learn? Pat learned that giving 50% and doing passable work is totally fine. Pat's thinking, "Heck, giving 100% must be for chumps if we both just got the same feedback." Chris learned that giving 100% doesn't get noticed, and Chris's thoughts will sound like "How many more times am I going to give 100% when the boss seems to think that 50% is every bit as good as 100%?"
Why Are We Teaching These Terrible Lessons?
It's easy to dump everything on our Hundred Percenters because they're, well, Hundred Percenters. And in the short term, developing more Hundred Percenters to spread the load seems like more work than just abusing the few we've already got. Yes, the bill will come due when those Hundred Percenters quit, but as we've seen in other chapters, for many folks, denial ain't just a river in Egypt.
We also do a lousy job of distinguishing between Hundred Percenters and everyone else. Largely, this is because of the mothering we got as children. Comments such as "Don't make Pat feel bad," or "Don't play favorites," or "Doing well is its own reward" were common refrains. It's easy to let our compensation systems differentiate Hundred Percenters (assuming your compensation systems actually do that), but it's a lot harder to differentiate the Hundred Percenter crowd when we've got the whole department standing around looking at us.
Of course, we're not allowed to play favorites on the basis of race, age, religion, sex, sexual preference, health status, and all the rest.
Not only are leaders allowed to differentiate your Hundred Percenters, but they're also required to do so. Across our employee survey database, comprising hundreds of thousands of employee survey respondents, over 70% of people say that Hundred Percenters should receive more rewards and recognition than others.
The challenge we've got is twofold: we've got to keep our Hundred Percenters continually striving to give 100%, and we've got to teach everyone else how and why to become a Hundred Percenter. In the sections that follow, I'm going to show you, first, how to recognize your Hundred Percenters and keep them motivated -- without throwing money at them. Second, I'm going to show you how to use a related technique to teach and motivate everyone else to become a Hundred Percenter.
Following my speeches that cover Hundred Percenters, I'm often asked if there any special secrets my trainers and I use when we implement these techniques with our clients. The answer is yes, but let me offer a caveat: each of our clients is a little different. For some organizations, we develop their employee survey; for others, we handle their leadership training; for some, we're doing 360&deg; leadership assessments, or we might be designing their Hundred Percenter performance appraisal; and for others still, we revamp all their goals and goal-setting processes. And, of course, for some clients, we do everything.
Lesson #1: Make Every Goal HARD
If you get no other lesson from this book, take away the idea that your goals need to be HARD. And that means everybody's goals. If you're the CEO, you can't ask your employees to achieve HARD goals if your goals aren't HARD. The same goes for trustees, vice presidents, managers, supervisors, and team leaders. The very first step I suggest you take is to review all your goals and see if they meet the HARD goal criteria outlined in Chapter 1. If not, rewrite them. And yes, you are allowed (and in fact obligated) to rewrite your goals throughout the year.
Lesson #2: Integrate HARD Goals into Performance Management
Once you've made sure that you've got HARD goals, take it one step further. Integrate those goals into every nook and cranny of your organization, including your performance management systems (e.g., performance appraisals). In Chapter 5, I showed you a technique called Word Pictures that we use to develop Hundred Percenter Performance Appraisals (you can learn even more about it on our Web site). Don't set HARD goals and then evaluate your folks using an entirely different set of criteria. If you want Hundred Percenters, evaluate, reward, and coach people using your HARD goals.
Lesson #3: Measure Whether You Have a Hundred Percenter Culture
Employee surveys, if they're well designed, can be great tools for telling you whether or not you have a Hundred Percenter culture (and what steps you need to take to get one). However, most surveys are terribly designed. So, first, read the Appendix, called "Why 5-Point Scales Don't Work (and Other Problems with Employee Surveys)." This will give you the techniques you need to design a great employee survey. Second, survey your employees (as long as it's been at least six months since your last survey, you're in the clear). If you asked your employees if they're "satisfied," but if you didn't ask if they're giving 100% or if their boss is pushing them to achieve greatness, then you probably didn't learn anything that's going to help you build a Hundred Percenter culture. Not only do you need some useful data, but there is simply no faster way to communicate your Hundred Percenter desires than by asking some great questions on an employee survey. (Remember, every question you ask communicates what you believe as a leader.)