Top Tips for Effective Performance Consulting: Part 3
Continuing my top tips…
Quantifying the performance gap is not easy
Don’t beat yourself up if you find it hard. Your client will be trying the discomfort of exposing their weakness.
So, don’t ask the direct question too early: “What would be the cost if we did nothing about this?”
You need to make sure that you have built enough trust by your active listening and seeing the world through their eyes by drawing a system diagram together.
Then look for a generalization such as “many” or “less than” or “some”
Ask: “How many?”, “less than what?” “What is some?”
Keep asking open question until you get a metric: “so the current error rate is 15%”
Flip it to the other side: “What would you expect it to be?” (Answer 10%)
Bingo! Now you have metrics on both sides of the performance gap equation you can quantify the gap “so we have a gap of 5% what is that worth?”
