4 steps to peak performance
A framework to get from great intentions to great outcomes
Yeah, I’m a bit weary of the X-steps-to-your-dreams listicles, too. The reality is that there are no silver bullets in life. Think of these 4 steps as a framework and not as a hack or a shortcut.
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You know the feeling. When you’ve worked hard, given it your best shot, but at the end of the cycle, you get a ‘Meets expectation’ or “Meets some expectations” rating.
Its frustrating. Its demotivating. And its confusing.
“What else could I have done?”, you wonder.
These 4 steps to peak performance are a framework to figure out where things slipped between great intentions to mediocre outcomes. At the end we discuss how to put these 4-steps to practice.
I must caveat by saying that these steps don’t replace feedback from your manager. Its their job to give you actionable feedback on how to improve. But manager’s also sometimes need us to help them, help us. Use these 4 steps as a list to get more specific and less open-ended feedback from your manager.
Let’s get into it.
#1: Work on things that matter to the company
Not all work is created equal.
At school, everybody appears for the same 100-mark question paper during exams. But that’s not how business works. In business, working on things that make the company make the most progress on its priorities, has more value. So, you want to make sure that you’re working on the most important company priorities; and the company priorities where you can make the most impact.
How do you figure what these are? You listen. And you ask.
Company leadership usually shares prioritise for the year at a town hall or company meeting at the start of the year. They provide context on why the company is focussing on these prioritise and a north star on what they’re trying to achieve. “By the end of the year, we want to achieve….” Kind of things. Pay attention to these. These tell you what matters to the company. You can also start to think about where, based on your role, you can contribute the most.
Then, when you’re having one-on-ones with your manager about goal setting, you want to discuss which of the company priorities you can cascade to your goals. In the beginning, your manager might take the lead in assigning you goals. Even then, its your job to understand the connection between your goals and the company’s goals. So you want to ask, “How does this goal link to company’s priorities? What can I do to make the biggest contribution towards the company’s goals?”
Another person who can help you think through this is the POC for that priority. For example, if there’s a person at headquarter, in a central team, who’s leading an initiative to automate a certain workflow (which is a company priority). You want to ask them how you can contribute to that priority – maybe you can be a participant in an early Beta, or help drive adoption in your scope? They can guide you to the most valuable contribution you can make towards the priority they are leading.
Discuss with your manager how you can bake these priorities into your goals.
#2: Set stretch goals
When you’re starting out, your primary job is execution. Leadership decides the priorities. Your boss – who is very likely in middle management- cascades those priorities to your scope. He also assigns you some resources to get to your goals – budgets, cross-functional partners. Your task is to achieve the goal with the resources you’re given.
You want to do a good job? Do more with less. Deliver more than your goal. Deliver your goal with less people, deliver it faster, deliver it more efficiently vs benchmarks and that’s a great demonstration of the value you’ve delivered.
You have to be able to demonstrate why what you’re aiming for (and hopefully delivering) is a stretch. IF the work has some precedent, then the best way to demonstrate the stretch is by benchmarking. Benchmark with external benchmarks – your share vs competition; your penetration vs category penetration levels. Benchmark versus historical trendlines – acceleration of user adoption, increase in profits.
If you’re doing something 0 to 1, then you show the value of the work by demonstrating the ambiguity and complexity that you helped the company navigate. Did you build hypothesis, and then test and learn for a lot of unknowns? That’s ambiguity. Did you coordinate execution among a large number of cross-functional teams? That’s organisational complexity. Did you predict what to build among a large number of variables? That’s functional complexity.
When doing something 0 to 1, think of what you’ve unlocked to show the value created, “because of what we’ve created, users (or the company, if internal product) will be able to do X in the future, which wasn’t possible before.”
Net- you should be able to explain why something is a stretch. Using benchmarks (vs external, or versus historical trends) is one way to do so; navigating ambiguity (number of unknowns) or complexity (number of variables - organisational or functional) is another.
#3: Get the work done
Now you have to deliver the goods. Everything else is the cherry on top. This is the real deal. In the beginning of your career, your primary task is to execute. So, when you start, the skill to differentiate yourself early is your ability to get things done. Getting things done is a composite skill.
A formula for execution is:
Execution = Prioritisation * (Productivity + Collaboration)
You need to know what to focus on (Prioritisation), you need to work well with others(collaboration), in addition to doing the heavy lifting yourself (productivity). This is something you need to do every day.
#4: Show value in your work
I used to think, it was my job to do the work; and my manager’s job to understand the value in the work I’d done. Or that the value of the work would be self-evident – that everybody would see things the way I saw them.
Looking back, that view wasn’t just naïve, it was borderline entitled.
Everyone sees things from their POV. And everyone is super busy. Its not just your job to do the work, its also part of your job to demonstrate the value in your work. Its basic accountability.
You see whatever goal you took on, whatever priority you worked towards, whatever resources you used – there’s a leader in the team who is responsible for that priority and for those resources. You’re executing the priority on their behalf with the resources they’ve allocated to you.
So, you have to keep them updated, and you have to close the loop with them via updates on the execution.
“We’ve delivered X vs goals Y. Compared to external benchmark; we’re at ABC.”
“Earlier we used to be able to do X; then we figured a way to do it <this way>; so now we’re able to do things <faster/cheaper/at bigger scale>”
“When we set our goals, we thought X was true; when we started executing, we realised Y. So going forward, we can do Z to avoid the problem.”
Ensure that the leaders who’ve own the goals you’re working towards; or the resources you’re using – are updated on the results you’re delivering and what you’re learning along the way. Its part of your job to show the value in your work.
Bonus: Scale your impact: Share your learnings -> Improve the processes and help other’s reapply what worked for you
Its good to deliver on your goals. Its great to do more with less. Its fantastic if you can help your company replicate your success. If you can help them figure out how you did what you achieved, and how you can scale the impact.
If you aren’t able to deliver on your goals, or if there were bumps along the way, you can help your company learn better for next time- fix the process, improve the way things are done. You do this by sharing your learnings – both what worked and what you’d do differently next time. This can be a short note emailed to the team or a slide shared in monthly team meeting. Ideally document it someplace folks can refer later. If you can share it with the process owner to adopt and scale, nothing like it.
This is the way to scale your impact so what you learnt and what you did can multiply in impact.
Putting this into practice: So how do you use these 4 steps?
Look at the 4 steps and reflect on where you’re doing well; and which one you need to fix
Take feedback from your manager and other important stakeholders to corroborate
If you’re planning for the cycle ahead, ensure you’re planning to cover all the steps
If you’re reflecting on a cycle gone by where things didn’t go as per plan – identify which of the steps was a miss – and think of what you’ll do differently the next time