Pressure Makes Diamonds

In a con­ver­sa­tion with a CEO to pre­pare for a strate­gic meet­ing, we pro­posed a new approach to ask peo­ple to rate their peers’ per­for­mances over the last quar­ter, make obser­va­tions about what they have done well and sug­gest how they might improve.

When we dis­cussed the idea, some­one said that some peo­ple might be uncom­fort­able doing this is such an open and trans­par­ent way.

The CEO, with whom we’ve worked togeth­er for a long time, and I looked at each oth­er and smiled – and I knew what he was thinking.

In the past, we’d been in many sit­u­a­tions where tough deci­sions need­ed to be made that required hard work. He had a lot of suc­cess, then, cre­at­ing a lot of pos­i­tive ten­sion as he led his orga­ni­za­tion through those chal­leng­ing times. And, while some team mem­bers weren’t com­fort­able, they per­se­vered and suc­ceed­ed – and their per­for­mance improved.

And that’s why we knew that, in this case – because we were in a room full of high per­form­ers – pos­i­tive ten­sion would cre­ate pos­i­tive outcomes.

The Sweet Spot of High­est Potential

A CEOs job is to cre­ate pos­i­tive ten­sion in the organization.

Not so much that per­for­mance is dimin­ished, and peo­ple’s abil­i­ties are par­a­lyzed. But enough to put peo­ple into the sweet spot of their high­est poten­tial. Ten­sion that increas­es focus and cre­ativ­i­ty so that they per­form bet­ter and, ulti­mate­ly, increase the organization’s growth and value.

Your A Play­ers will vis­i­bly thrive, and you will quick­ly be able to see who is not able to step up and per­form at a high­er level.

If a CEO doesn’t cre­ate reg­u­lar­ly cre­ate pos­i­tive ten­sion, they become more like an admin­is­tra­tor, and growth will like­ly slow, decline or, poten­tial­ly, stop.

Clear Goals & Accountability

That’s why, in the strate­gic plan­ning process, it’s crit­i­cal that your orga­ni­za­tion is aligned and com­mit­ted to where it wants to be in three years.

The excite­ment and ten­sion are cre­at­ed when the teams are locked, loaded and ful­ly com­mit­ted to achieve those great things.

Then, you cas­cade down to build out the annu­al and quar­ter­ly goals to get there. And, ide­al­ly, a quar­ter­ly score card for each exec­u­tive and key leader, that clar­i­fies their per­son­al con­tri­bu­tion, every 90 days, toward the team’s big­ger commitment.

In one com­pa­ny, we even had the team plan how they would cel­e­brate togeth­er as a team, and as a com­pa­ny, when they reached that amaz­ing milestone.

The Chal­lenge

• What could you do to apply more pos­i­tive atten­tion to achieve your most impor­tant com­pa­ny or department/​divisional goals?

Oth­er Blogs

• Pos­i­tive Per­for­mance Pressure
• Iden­ti­fy­ing the Real MVPs
• Embrace the Pow­er of Milestones

Old­er Podcasts

• The Impor­tant Num­ber CEOs Rarely Measure
• What’s More Impor­tant: Right Peo­ple or Right Strategy?