Good morning from an overcast Vancouver. The good news is that there are buds on the trees and small shoots appearing in gardens; spring is creeping her way into winter’s hold.
I’ve been doing some studying recently on employee development, keeping my saw sharp as it were, and I have uncovered a great metaphorical equation about how we prioritize our time as leaders.  It’s from the work of Robert Simons and Antonio Davila, published in April of 2005’s Harvard Business Review. The article is called “How High is Your Return on Management?” In it, Simons and Davila offer the following equation:

ROM = PER
              MTAI

That is ROM (Return on Management) = PER (Productive Energy Released) over MTAI (Management Time and Attention Invested). Put narratively, the effectiveness of my management is directly related to the amount of time and attention I put into a particular employee, to gain productivity. If I put a lot of time and attention into a particular employee and that time and attention is not impacting productivity, wouldn’t I be more effective putting my time and attention towards employees who are going to be that much more productive?

Anecdotally, my wife (the brains of the operation) is a choral singer who sings with the Christ Church Cathedral Choir, here in Vancouver. This is the best choir of it’s kind in the country, and would be in the top 25 such choirs globally. They are so good, that they are no longer able to enter the CBC Choral Competiion held biannually. After their last competition, sitting in a pub celebrating (they are an Anglican choir), I was sitting next to the Director of the choir. I asked, how do you do this? How do you take this group of performers and make them so good? His reply was simple and quick; “I focus on the stars.” As we discused this, he explained that he had started with a group of stars, a group of solid performers, and some underperformers. He chose to focus his attention on challenging the stars and the solid performers, rather than spending lots of time trying to develop the underperformers. The result? Soon enough the choir was engaged, working hard, and having fun. The underperformers began to either increase their engagement and skills, or self-select out. (There are still former choir members who think the director is mean and awful, but frankly that says more about them, than it does of him.)

I think this speaks volumes about Simons and Davila’s work. Where I put my attention and time as a leader is a very important question. The literature and my own experience and observation agree, focus more on the stars and the solid performers, engaging and challenging them. You will have to spend some time with the underperformers, but that is about helping them work up, or out of the situation. By focusing most of your MTAI on the stars and solid performers, you’ll find that the PER increases and thus your ROM increases. And that is all good!

Here’s to an effective and productive week for us all!