- Adaptive performance management is based on your desire
to continually improve your ability to do your work.
Your personal commitment to being the best
you can possibly be.
Yet, life is never perfect.
You can't possibly perform perfectly every time.
And it's a fool's errand to set such pressure on yourself
that you could try to do so.
So what's the answer?
Performance optimization.
Optimizing performance is the process
of continually trying to improve the conditions
under which you do your work
and to do the best possible work under those conditions.
But optimization is predicated on the assumption
that nothing is perfect,
not the conditions, nor the available resources,
nor your abilities.
Performance optimization benefits
from much of what we learn from Silicon Valley companies
and the move toward lean start-ups
that's been championed by author Eric Ries.
There are four key elements to optimization.
First, performance optimization is absolutely dependent
on taking risks.
If you don't push yourself,
you're never going to improve more than incrementally.
Taking risks means that you're accepting
the possibility or even the likelihood
that you're going to fail.
More on this in another video.
Secondly, in a rapidly changing world,
you're never going to have all the information
that you need.
When you're optimizing your performance,
you need to make decisions
based on the information you have.
Third, performance optimization depends
on continuous adjustments.
Small adjustments on a daily basis,
big adjustments when a strategy requires
that you pivot to a new set of goals.
And fourth, performance optimization benefits
from limited resources.
When we have too much time, too much help,
and too much money,
we have built-in incentives to be lazy,
to work inefficiently, and to waste resources.
So let me give you an example of that fourth requirement.
I was the chief operating officer
of an enterprise software start-up
back in the mid 90s.
We raised a boatload of money in a short period of time
and we staffed up with 70 employees
long before we had a product to sell.
And in fact, the product those 70 employees were working on
never actually shipped.
It took a skunkworks group
of a half a dozen college students
to come up with the idea for the product
that the company eventually went public on.
Now, it seems counterintuitive,
but the process of optimizing performance
can actually benefit from limiting resources.
Shorter deadlines, fewer people, less money,
if it's done with a mentality of optimization.
So, here's your next assignment.
The next time you're planning a project,
think about the ways that you can optimize your performance.
Ask yourself these questions.
What's the least amount of information I need
to be able to keep the project moving forward?
What's the least amount of resources,
time, skills, money,
that I need to achieve my goals?
How can I take some intelligent risks
that I might not have otherwise?
And what adjustments and improvements can I make
on a continuous basis?
Again, as I've said repeatedly,
if you know your own unique skills and other attributes,
you'll be able to match up the resources that are available
with your own ability to deliver.
Think of optimization then,
as a continual process of determining goals,
understanding available resources,
and then relentlessly executing,
even when everything isn't ideal.