I don’t know if it’s true for humanity as a whole or is this just an Indian trait. Maybe my international readers can help me answer this, once they are done reading this piece. Till then, the “We” in this article refers to us- Indians.
We are all performance-oriented individuals. We love good performances. We value people who perform and we criticise/demolish people who don’t. We are advised constantly to improve performance. We give lectures to younger ones to put more hardwork to improve performance.
But Why? Why does performance matter so much?
Why do we subject people to constant pressure of performance improvement?
Few days back, when the news of Ms. Sushma Swaraj’s death came out, I was deeply moved. She was one of the few political leaders I admired. If I reflect back on what made me like her, it was her stint as the External Affairs Minister of our country. Her witty responses to people, her eagerness to help Indians at any time of the day or night or her passion towards making a global mark for India. As I read the many posts/tweets that were being written for her post her death, I knew I wasn’t alone. So many people loved her for what she was. And almost all messages had reference to her stint as the External Affairs Minister. I was surprised to know she had once also been the Chief Minister of Delhi, clearly a stint that didn’t get her as much love from people as her last stint did.
Performance matters.
Look at MS Dhoni. Our beloved Captain. Captain Cool. The one who got us the World Cup back. The one who made India No. 1, he was the apple of everyone’s eye. The nation loved him. But what happened during the recent World Cup?
For his performance in some crucial matches, he was ridiculed. People started questioning his seat in the team. There were hate messages being sent. There were memes being floated.
Performance matters
Few years back when I had written about public memory being short in this article, I had not realised the deep sense of performance orientation in us. This is why we forget people’s past glories easily. If we have trusted you with a job, we expect you to do it. Perform it every time you step in the field. And if you don’t, sorry dude- but we aren’t sorry!
Same is true in the ruthless corporate world. A star performer gets de-merited next year. Context changes, market behaves differently, you didn’t meet your targets and hence you are no more a star performer. I have had people come to me and discuss how unfair the company has been to them. This is not how you should treat your best performer. Irony of life being- the same guy raises his voice when Dhoni slows the run-rate!
Zomato India is another classic example.
It was in news recently for not obliging to a customer’s request of changing the delivery boy because the delivery boy’s religion didn’t match the religion of the customer. Everyone congratulated Zomato for doing this- We are One India. All religions are equal. Good on you Zomato.
The same company was in news in December last year when one of its delivery boys was caught on camera eating food from a customer’s order. Shame on you Zomato! You don’t treat your boys well. You can’t be trusted with our orders!
Performance Matters
Sports, Politics, Corporates are obvious examples of this. But this deep sense of appreciating performance dates back to thousands of years – even in Mythology, performance has always played a crucial role. In Mahabharata, when Duryodhana decided to induct Karna (belonging to a lower caste- prior to his true identity being revealed), it was because of his performance as a warrior. Duryodhana knew he needed a strong person like Karna to give a good fight to Pandavas. This is the caste system era I am talking about. Karna was raised in a Sutaputra (or a charioteer caste) and hence was considered of low caste- they weren’t allowed to be friends with Brahmins and Kshatriyas. But here he was- right hand man to Duryodhana!
Performance Matters
See, I can go on and on. But I want you to look around and reflect at all those moments where you succeeded or maybe didn’t succeed. My sense is you will relate it to performance. Either yours, or someone else’s. That’s the ultimate truth. As human beings, we value good performance and we penalize poor performance.
As HR, when we invest money in trying to “build” a performance culture in an organization, we can and should only look at building the eco-system around it- procedures, policies and systems. In no way should we waste money in building this skill in individuals. The behavioral aspect of recognizing, appreciating a good performance is in our DNA. We are built like that. By default, Hum aise hi hain!
So, here’s why writing all this was important. Here’s why we need to come out of the stress to improve performance but to embrace it as a constant thing to do. Performance improvement is a positive thing and not a negative thing. It becomes negative when someone else expects you to improve performance. That means you are not able to meet their performance criteria. It is a positive thing to do when it comes as an internal voice and you drive your own performance, measure it the way you want and work to improve performance.
If performance matters in our everyday life, and we are wired to like/dislike performance naturally, then by knowing these two facts of life, how is it that we can become champions in our area of work?
This is how you can improve performance
- Have a sense of belief in what you do. You will never be able to perform at the same level at all times. There would be internal and external factors that would affect your performance levels. It is okay. It is acceptable. Whatever brick bats or rewards come with your performance level, accept them. How can you accept them? By having a larger belief in what you do. If you love what you do, if you respect what you do, if you know what you do is good for you or for others, you will operate at a consistent level- not performance wise, but acceptance wise. Despite the results, you would continue to work hard, have the determination and the focus to plan and execute. It’s a big thing to achieve. But also, easy if you have found your belief. A small example from my personal life to explain this better. I am a story educator with kids. I believe in the importance of teaching life and language skills to kids, in a non-classroom way. I have seen the impact of such teaching methodology in my own girl. And hence I have run batches with as low as 2 kids. I didn’t want to give up, I knew sooner or later I will get more enrollments to make it a financially viable model for me, and it did. I am going to start two full batches next week. Imagine if I had given up after seeing only 2 enrolments!
- Learn Learn and Learn– Learning is a never-ending journey. Don’t accept that you know everything your job requires you to know. Keep investing in your learning. Talk to people, grow your network, understand why they do what they do. Stay abreast with latest things in your area of work. Basically, don’t be a dud and assume you are the best. You may be the best today, but tomorrow you could be last. Be in a constant loop of learning.
- Constructively assess performance. Both yours and others. Now that’s a difficult thing to do. I also struggle with it. I think more than achieving the sense of belief, it is the urge to not critically assess performance, but constructively assess it. Most time, we critically assess it.
- Why did you do that?
- Who told you to do that?
- Couldn’t have thought better? But the questions should rather be
- What were the other options you evaluated before taking this decision?
- Who inspired you to execute like this?
- What made you pick this as the thing you should do?
Long story short- we will fail. We will get penalised for a failure, because thats our human nature- we also penalise others when they fail, so they will also raise question marks when we fail. It’s okay to fail. However, be prepared to handle that failure better. Try and work at a level that the criticism that comes with a failure doesn’t affect you. Build an environment around you that fosters high performance levels and not de-rails it.
If you’ve liked reading this, you may like my future posts too. Kindly subscribe to this website so that all future posts reach your Inbox directly, which will reduce the chances of you missing out on these posts. Also, do share widely with your network- specially your young friends. I write for young people, to help them get aware of various life experiences and how to deal with them.
Photo by Kolleen Gladden on Unsplash
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