About Execution

In business is a tendency of overloading people who execute very well. I found my self reflecting on the why the other day.

There is this tendency by which people who execute well and above average (by average I mean the average of the team or, more broadly, of the organization) are sometimes rewarded with bigger bonuses (if the KPIs are based on performance), but most of the times overloaded.

Overloaded with the tasks that more people should do. Attention: not that other teammates shall do, but with tasks that are simply more.

If the average of tasks, of whichever form in whichever vertical inside a company, is 10 per day and John makes 12, the tendency will be to think that on average John can make 12 per day. However, the same reasoning is not applied to the other team members.

We are all different in the workplace and we cannot imagine for everyone to have the same performance. This is understood. But why then we tend to overload high achievers whilst forgiving average or below average achievers?

Managers

One may think that the overexecution cover for the missing execution of others. This may make managers happy, because they see the bigger picture: they need 100 tasks done per day, it does not matter if one does 12 and another 8.

However, I think that managers shall benchmark, in addition to the periodic (i.e. semestral) goals they give their teams, what is the average benchmark of performance throughout the period. Then, based on that, they can identify good executors.

Good execution does not mean merely accomplishing a task; it means delivering it with quality, leaving a legacy of documentation for the future and the current team members, and indeed acquiring ownership and knowledge of the matter at hand.

Good executors

Good executors shall be rewarded, if in line with their goals and incentives, with "hard thinking" tasks.

They can be given "hard thinking" tasks because, if they excel at execution it may mean that they have some elastic mindset allowing them to be better than average. 

It is true that you can also have blind executors, meaning people that excel just at execution and that's it. But this shall not refrain managers from at least trying to give these people hard challenges.

What's there to be lost? Worst case scenario after 3 months the person can go back to do what is good at: execute.