Most People Aren’t Very Good at What They Do
A client and good friend attributes most of his companies’ success to his competitors’ inabilities to be good at what they do. He claims that 80% of people are not very good at their work. Is this true? If we know the cause, can it be fixed within our organizations?
In the piling industry, being available when people wanted piles was innovative. Previously, the piling industry told their clients when they could be there. A tiny Manitoba company flipped the script, scaling 10x on the simple innovation. Simply, being available when the client was ready.
The coffee shops that serve bad coffee. The car dealerships, where sales people don’t greet you until you tug at their suit. Surely, you have experienced similar or worse.
The problem is everywhere in Canada
Being bad at what we do is a documented problem. There is a productivity crisis in Canada. For years we have been stagnant in our GDP growth (Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada 2019 ). Too many businesses are bad at what they do.
Why is mediocrity more common-place than excellence?
We found that there were 3 main factors that have caused individuals and companies to be pretty terrible at what they do;
Don’t care enough
Waste Time
Pre-occupied with their work
80% of People Just Don’t Care
In 2022 Inc.com claimed “More than 70 percent of workers say they don’t feel satisfied with their career choices”. That is staggering, it isn’t even the job that they are unsatisfied with it is the career choice!
An article from Entrepreneur states, “only 40 percent of millennial employees surveyed felt strongly connected to their company’s mission. This disconnect is sure to cause a lack of direction and create listless employees disengaged from their work.”
If employees and companies are experiencing this type of disconnect than it is no wonder that in 2017 Gallup published a poll saying that “Only 15% of the world's one billion full-time workers are engaged at work.”
It isn’t hard to make the connection, disinterested employees are not going to be excellent at their craft.
Wasting Time
The Development Academy in the UK did a study on 500 employees of various levels. They found that,
“82% of people don’t have a time management system. They just use a list, their email inbox or nothing at all.”
Only 12% schedule all main tasks in advance, thinking they will remember.
Stats Canada published, “In 2019, almost 6 in 10 businesses identified skill shortages related to the area of skilled trades. …only 56.2% endeavoured to train staff to overcome the shortage.” Only 3 in 10 companies decided to leverage their employee’s time with training.
Too Pre-occupied with work
Often people and businesses start off with passion and enthusiasm and then get bogged down in the reality of circumstance. McKinney & Company studied the need for innovation and expertise in today’s marketplace. This quote from a 2022 article drives this point home, interviewing senior executives response to COVID-19.
“only a quarter reported that capturing new growth was a top priority (first- or second-order) today, compared to roughly 60 percent before the crisis hit” McKinsey & Company 2022
If our senior staff is struggling to be exceptional, what chance does the rest of our organization have?
So how do you fix medocrity?
Developing Passion
Passionate pursuit of a topic is curiosity. You can develop your passion by increasing your curiosity in your field and in those around you.
Curiosity, the willingness to explore, try, turn things inside out is a key ingredient for innovation.
We gravitate to people that are passionate about their craft because curiosity is the spark of expertise.
In the next 5 days: Set aside 1-hour in your calendar to research something that you are mildly curious about. Did that grow your curiosity? Use that experience to grow curiosity in others.
Developing Expertise
Expertise is important in creating value as it links the needs to the method of implementation. Michael Araki, University of Louisville, 2021, writes an interesting paper on the 4 Components of Expertise. In the paper he discusses the need for 4 types of knowledge that are typically found in business; visionary (concepts and principles), operational (tool knowledge, how too), sales and marketing (experiential knowledge), and then organizational (systematized and process, Meta-Knowledge).
All 4 need synergy (as one) showing the need for collaboration, while in pursuit of departmental excellence. We touch on a similar concept of balance in our pillars of business blog post. Why collaborate to add expertise?
In the next month: Use curiosity in others to build more collaboration around the office.
The Innovation Challenge
Innovation, or creating value for clients and consumers is the opposite of mediocrity. It is the making of a Google 5-star review. Passion combined with expertise and collaboration nearly always ends up with the creation and implementation of a value offering.
Guard yourself and your business from mediocrity by;
Surrounding yourself with passionate, curious people.
Managing your time and training employees to do the same.
Intentionally creating value (see this post for ways a Business Plan helps)
How can Drive Coaching help?
We’re not sure until we talk, reach out to a coach for a conversation to see if we can help with your scenario.
