This is a thought provoking entry from Curious Cat Management on the single point of failure. How many days do we allow an individual to hold the company, or some part of it, hostage to his/her exclusive knowledge? How often do you allow the performance of your team to be dictated by the individuals?
And what do you do when those same indivduals have an off day, or an off week, or a personal problem, or even the sniffles…
How wonderful is it when your key employee comes through for you in fighting the hundred new fires that came up today? Did you ever stop to think that the hundred fires might have been set ablaze by the same individual?
True, there’s nothing exciting about adherence to a process. There’s nothing exciting or remarkable about any individual when a well designed process eliminates the art from regular high performance. What is left to differentiate someone if they are not the lynch pin in your system – your single point of failure.
Instead of rewarding the individual for a stellar performance, how about you reward the individual for bringing up the entire team’s performance. It reminds me of the activities of World War II, when the leaders looked to the individuals in the trenches for ingenious solutions to the things that stood in their way. While individually recognized for their contributions to the war effort, the benefit was not in the individual working harder or faster, but in making it possible for everyone around him or her to be more productive.
Don’t reward people for standing out above their peers, reward them for not standing out above their peers because they’ve brought their peers up to their level.
