Can the Pareto Principle be Reversed in Your Organization?

“Using a Personal Performance Analytics System – A new subset of the Business Analytics Market can help”

By Jon Bartos

“Knowledge has become the key economic resource and the dominant, if not the only, source of competitive advantage.”    ~ Peter F. Drucker

Can the Pareto Principle of 20% of your people who produce 80% of the results be reversed?  With technology, it may now be possible.  The Business Intelligence and Analytics market is one of the fast growing sectors in Information Technology.  And for good reason.  Finally we have the tools that if set up correctly, can give us meaningful information that will allow us to make timely decisions.  By gaining this new insight, these decisions can help us improve all areas of our organizations.  Most importantly team and individual performance.

Wikipedia defines Business Analytics as:

Business analytics (BA) refers to the skills, technologies, applications and practices for continuous iterative exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business planning.Business analytics focuses on developing new insights and understanding of business performance based on data and statistical methods.

There is a new segment of the Business Intelligence space in its infancy that has the potential to truly change the world of “work” as we know it.  It’s a segment within Business Performance Management called Personal Performance Analytics.  Like the potential of Genome therapy, Personal Performance Analytics has an opportunity to be the catalyst for an exponential increase in personal performance in every position where increasing or monitoring performance is needed.  Which by the way is needed in every position from Sales Rep, to President, to Customer Service Rep to Cost Accountant.

Personnel Performance Analytics (PPA) – refers to the skills, technologies, applications and practices for continuous iterative exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business planning. Personnel Performance Analytics focuses on developing new insights and understanding of INDIVIDUAL performance based on data and statistical methods.  It can be used for all positions where performance can be measured and benchmarked, both past as well as predicting future trends.

If the Personnel Performance Analytics is set up correctly, the insight it can give can be priceless.  For example, when setting up a sales person on a personal performance analytics solution, we would focus on the primary activities of selling.  It would be prospecting, qualifying, presentation, setting expectations, re-qualifying, pre-closing and closing skills.  A PPA system can tell us the strengths and weaknesses of an individual in every area.  The same is true for a Customers Service Rep, Cost Account, Teacher, Nurse or Fireman.  By focusing on the primary activities of the role, we can get to the analytics part quickly.



Typically when analytics are focused on the primary duties that need to be performed in a specific role – after 90 days here are immediate benefits:

                A full understanding of performance currently and why

Most managers today, manage by outcomes.  That’s it.  No real developing, coaching or training goes on anymore.  Often if they reach there desired outcome, they get to stay.  If they don’t, they are asked to leave.  If there is any coaching going on, 90% of managers suggest more activity to produce the desired result.  Unfortunately more often than not, that is dead wrong – like a doctor giving you an aspirin for a brain tumor.  You might be able to temporarily postpone the pain, but it certainly won’t cure the problem.  By using a Personal Performance Analytics system, you know the specific reason why the performance is where it is, either good or bad.  But now, with that new information, corrective action can be taken by the individual or the manager to get the required training or redirection from the specific deficiency identified.   In our example above, if our sales person struggled with qualifying skills, more activity would simply lead to more company resources used up and counterproductive to the outcome of more revenue desired.

The “AHA” Moment

When individuals and managers use a PPA system, there is always an “AHA” moment.  It typically occurs once 30 – 60 days if metrics are collected.  The “AHA” moment is when one finally identifies the main issue that is causing them to be unable to achieve their objective.  And more often than not, it’s a complete surprise.
In working with a top Account Executive from a National Recruiting Firm, the manager swore his top AE needed to make more calls and face to face appointments.  After setting her up on a PPA system, the “AHA” moment was realizing that she worked on 10 jobs to make one placement.  The problem wasn’t more activity – it was qualifying the work she had taken.  Once she realized the problem and developed 5 questions to further qualify her searches, her revenue doubled in 90 days.  Yes doubled.

A map to true “continual improvement” can be drawn

Instead of guessing what break out session to go to at conferences or deciding on what specific training your team should have, with a PPA system you can pinpoint the training and development actually needed.   No more wasted time and money on training they don’t need, we can focus on what needs to be done to hit individual and team objectives.  Based on our discovery of our deficiencies, like a straight line from A to B, we can put together a development program to get the quickest path to change and the objective obtained.  Once the initial deficiency is resolved, then the next item on the list can be worked on for improvement, whatever it may be that the PPA system identifies. Continual improvement to achieve human potential.

Bottom Line Results

The reason we all should be interested in using a PPA system is bottom line results.   Increased performance.  But there is also other benefits users are seeing:  rookies coming up to speed faster, tenured employees see immediate identification of problematic areas, accountability is switched from Manager to Performer, real training and Development paths are created, online reward systems are put in place and Individuals and teams have an opportunity to reach their performance potential.

The RPM System was created for just this reason.  Achieving your individual and team potential in selling.  It’s a cloud based PPA tool that takes data from multiple CRM/ATS systems to populate the data.  The RPM Solution helps individuals and teams set goals, calculate metrics, give weekly dashboard views, pin point specific strengths and weaknesses and finally gives training and development on the areas of deficiency.  Join companies seeing incredible results all around the globe by going contacting us at info@rpm-usa.com today for more information on how to reverse the Pareto Principle going on at your organization.

Science of Selling

Increase your individual and team performance using the RPM System for critical metrics management!

Managing a recruiting team is not unlike that of managing a major league baseball team. The tenured manager understands how to get rookies and veterans off to a good start at the beginning of the year by developing the proper habits to achieve big league success. Once a rookie gets seasoned, the focus shifts to other skills that continue to be worked on based on specifi c achievements, or lack thereof. How can you tell when one player is doing well and another is struggling and needs some attention?

It is often not initially apparent, but eventually shows up in the results. The outcome itself, however, may not provide an explanation and true understanding of the variables necessary to evaluate the stats. The times at bat, the averages,

the ERA, the On-base percentages, etc.   Yes, the true answer lies in the numbers. For recruiters, we refer to these as the metrics. Recruiters and leaders who learn to manage their team and themselves by their numbers have a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses and individual skill set deficiencies. They know where they must spend their time to improve both team and individual performance.

They also have the ability to see trend lines – both positive and negative – which allows them to predict the future. That’s right…predict the future. And change it.

That’s where the RPM System comes in! The RPM System tracks and analyzes key metrics data, allowing the user to quickly identify trends and pinpoint problem areas for immediate correction. 

 

Pre-season Conditioning: Quantity Activity Metrics

When a newbie comes to play in the recruiting arena, a good manager knows that the first focus has to be on getting his player’s “at bats.” The more “at bats” they will have, the better chance they will have of success. The tenured recruiting manager knows that his fi rst job is to get his rookies “at bats” by getting them on the phone. If the new recruiter does not get enough “at bats”, they will fail. Contrary to popular belief – even with today’s social media, resume grabbers, aggregators, spider engines, job board alerts, and much more at our fi nger tips – recruiting is still a phone business.  Developing the habit of being on the phone and not off the phone is a critical objective in the fi rst 90 days for all new players. This conditioning must take place to develop the habits necessary for success in recruiting. Managers must also institute “minimum” levels of expectations on the critical activity metrics that lead to recruiting success.

The focus must first be on achieving these“Quantity” metrics before moving on to the“Quality” metrics.  Come back each week as we focus on the quantity metrics and their use.