Drift to Low Performance
Allowing performance standards to be influenced by past performance, especially with a negative bias, creates a reinforcing feedback loop that erodes goals and causes a system to drift toward low performance.
THE IDEA
Drift to Low Performance
Trap: Allowing performance standards to be influenced by past performance, especially if there is a negative bias in perceiving past performance, sets up a reinforcing feedback loop of eroding goals that sets a system drifting toward low performance.
The Way Out: Keep performance standards absolute. Even better, let standards be enhanced by the best actual performances instead of being discouraged by the worst. Set up a drift toward high performance!
When to use it
Setting team performance goals in a corporate environment to avoid a gradual decline in expectations.
Personal goal setting where past failures might tempt lowering standards; instead, anchor to aspirational benchmarks.
Quality control in manufacturing where tolerances for defects can increase if past defect rates are accepted as the norm.
Reviewing whether changes to academic pass marks lower the level of mastery students are expected to demonstrate.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Software Development Deadlines
A software team repeatedly misses delivery dates. Managers accept each decline in delivery performance as the new standard without investigating its causes. As expectations fall, efforts to improve delivery also diminish. This differs from revising an unrealistic estimate using better evidence.
Sales Target Adjustment
A sales organization fails to hit its quarterly targets repeatedly. The leadership responds by reducing the targets for the next quarter, citing 'realistic' goals. Salespeople now have less incentive to push hard, and actual performance continues to decline, reinforcing the cycle of lowered expectations.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
In what areas of your life or work have you seen standards lowered due to past performance? What was the impact?
How can you shift from a reactive standard-setting based on past failures to proactive standards based on best performances?
What systems can you put in place to maintain absolute performance standards despite fluctuations?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Thinking in Systems A Primer