MASTERING MANAGEMENTTop Performance:
Stars Don't Shine Alone BOSTON - What contributes to an individual's ability to remain a top performer? To what extent does past star performance predicate future star performance? And to what extent does a key organizational factor - colleague quality - help or hinder the ability to sustain star performance? Top performance is an important career matter for individuals as well as for managers and owners who want to inspire, nurture and recruit stars. A new study by Harvard Business Schools (HBS) professors Boris Groysberg and Linda-Eling Lee, titled "The Effects of Colleague Quality on Top Performance" and reviewed in the (HBS) Working Knowledge newsletter, provides a numbers of answers to these and other questions. The authors say that while it is true that a star's past performance indicates future performance, it is the quality of colleagues in his or her organization that has a significant impact on the ability to maintain the highest quality output. "The main difference between knowledge workers and manual workers," the authors explain, "is that knowledge workers own the means of production." That means they carry the knowledge, information and skills in their heads and can take it with them. In industries where the basis of competition shifts to superior knowledge and information, organizations have naturally become increasingly concerned that they attract, leverage, support and retain the best knowledge workers available.
Is performance portable? "Our culture is very enamored of stars, and with the idea that extraordinary talent accounts for individuals' extraordinary performance," Groysberg and Lee note. "There is an assumption by many that these star knowledge workers, like star athletes, actually 'own' everything they need to perform at the top level and can take that knowledge and skill anywhere. They are treated as free agents who can take their top performance to work for the highest bidder. Our study debunks that myth. "Stars need to recognize that despite their talent, knowledge, experience and reputation, whom they work with really matters for sustaining top performance," they continue. "Specifically, top performers rely on high-quality colleagues in their organizations to improve the quality of their own work and to deliver it effectively to clients. Bottom line: They cannot replicate their top performance in any organizational context by themselves."
Cultivate or hire? Top performance is a coveted resource. On one hand, it can be developed from within an organization; on the other, it can be acquired from outside from another. For any business, however, creating and nurturing a cultural environment that supports and enables top performance to thrive can be a critical competitive edge. When there is a lack of high-quality support and information sharing inside a business, top performance can be elusive and/or unsustainable. The implications for top performers, managers and businesses are clear. For top performers contemplating a move to another firm, "They need to recognize that despite their talent, knowledge, experience and reputation, whom they work with really matters for sustaining top performance," the professors explain. When considering a career move, it is very important for both top performers and managers to evaluate the level of support received from colleagues in different parts of the organization, in both the firm a top performer is leaving and the one to which they are going. Management can hire or cultivate top performers. In industries where stars are treated as free agents who can take their top performance to work for the highest bidder, managers seeking to recruit top talent must consider what role the former business and its team played in a star's performance, in addition to how a new hire will integrate into their existing organization support network. "Any one decision on hiring and retention can have a real impact on the performance of top employees in an entirely different part of the firm," say the authors. Talent is one thing; fit is another. A company that already has a large stable of high-performing individuals might have built a corresponding competitive advantage over similar businesses in a market, whereas those that lack this advantage fight an uphill battle. A bevy of top performers makes it easier and more likely for the stars to sustain one another's top performance. Simply put, success can breed and fuel future success. But it is not enough to have just a few star performers here and there within the organization. For if there are only a few stars, these individuals will tend to have a tougher time sustaining or supporting top performance in themselves and others. Furthermore, hiring a single top performer without an environment and team that fosters this environment will likely have less than the desired effect. It's like a baseball team that hires a pitching ace, but still lacks defensive expertise on the rest of the field. A third of the time you'll get a strikeout, but the rest of the time someone has to field the ball when it's hit. Or not.
(Source: Harvard School of Business) 
