Information Technology Dark Side

Many organizations have compensation structures & processes that reward “high performance” employees more than regular joes. Usually, these high performers are a group of people with the performance ratings in the 90th percentile, or the top 10%. Conversely, some organizations automatically fire the bottom 10%.

A few months ago, I was lucky enough to find myself on a plane to Philadelphia, sitting next to Tom Simmons, a professional comedian. We had a very interesting conversation, and Tom was kind enough to tolerate my questions about his business. At one point, he offered some valuable insight about employee performance in general - if all you do is care, you are automatically in the top 10%.

I’ve been thinking about this ever since. I remember my reaction when he said that. Sweet, I thought. I care. I’m in the top ten! Gimme that bonus, baby.

But… am I? Do I really care? Tom also pointed out that 90% of the workforce think they are in the top 10%. Apparently, most of us think we care, but… how do we know? I’ve been thinking of this for a while, and I thought I’d come up with a few questions that could be used to determine whether or not you REALLY care. Almost all of us think we do, so let’s think about how to figure out if that’s really true.

Here are the questions.

You don’t have to be able to answer all of these questions to prove you care, but I think if you can’t answer ANY of them well, whether you want to believe it or not, you probably don’t care.

I think it’s hard to teach people to care, because most people already believe they do. Do you?

Dave Christiansen is the founder and managing editor of
TechDarkSide.com. He manages projects for a Fortune 100 financial services company and writes and talks about project management. He can be reached at dave@techdarkside.com.

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