Fit

CONCLUSION

Too often performance is put down to talent, and the assumption is that if we just find the right talent, performance will take care of itself. At best this is naïve; at worst it is negligent. Talent is not the issue. Sure, we need a ticket to the dance but it's not nearly as important as we've been led to believe. Of course we need certain skills and abilities in order to thrive in any role (if we don't enjoy working on our own or find it difficult to marshal our thoughts on paper then it's unlikely we're going to thrive as a writer, for example), but over-investing in talent eventually triggers the law of diminishing returns. Already a huge amount of time and money is spent on talent management. And yet if talent was so amazing, why does it need to be managed at all?

Of course it needs to be managed, because even a brilliant player can be terrible in the wrong team. Ensuring the right fit for the team, network and culture is every bit as important as skill and ability. Understanding personality and how that impacts performance and fit is therefore a crucial ingredient in performance improvement.

We've exhausted the blanket solutions. Many do help, but the real gains come from individual internal assessment and fine-tuning. I use the Hogan tools because they provide a great ball-park GPS location that can help the individual and the team to find and implement simple but effective strategies.

It is these insights that can finally make consistent high performance ...