How to Lead, 5th Edition

Part 3

Action: Make it happen

Introduction

The productivity of effective and less effective sales people is dramatic. For instance, MetLife found that its best insurance people were twice as effective as its least effective sales people. This is a normal finding in sales-related jobs, where it is easy to make productivity comparisons. Most professional jobs are much more ambiguous than sales: success is less clear and depends on quality as much as quantity. Comparing productivity across professionals is much harder because no one is doing quite the same job. If anything, this means that productivity variations between professionals are likely to be even greater than between sales people. Bluntly, it is easier for anyone with an ambiguous ...