If you’ve ever flown on a Southwest Airlines flight, you probably paid a little more attention to the safety announcements than usual. Southwest’s announcements are personal and comedic, a touch that originated with a single proactive employee named Martha ‘Marty’ Cobbs. By going above and beyond to brighten her customers’ day, it’s estimated that Cobbs has added $140M each year in customer loyalty.
I call employees such as Cobbs 120%ers, because they exceed expectations in every project. Building a team made up of these employees can significantly contribute to success. In customer-facing roles like those of Cobbs, it translates to customer loyalty and huge brand recognition. Internally, 120%ers can drive productivity and innovation to new heights. As a manager, these are the people I want on my team.
3 Types of Employees
Throughout my managerial career, I’ve found that employees generally fit into one of three categories. I call them 50%ers, 80%ers and 120%ers, because of what they give back to a company.
- The 50%er: 50%ers are the quintessential underachiever. When a manager hands over a project, this employee returns it at 50-60% of the ideal outcome. 50%ers are rarely around for long and their career is going to struggle, but with a 50%er on the team, so is your startup.
- The 80%er: With an 80%er, when a manager hands out a project, it’s returned to 75-100% of the ideal. Personally, I think 80%ers are the most dangerous for a startup. They’ll scrape through appraisals and have a solid career, and as a manager or founder you might settle for these employees — but you could be getting much more.
- The 120%er: The switch from 80% to 120% is an exponential shift for any employee. This person takes on a project, thinks about it deeply, and can return it better than was initially envisioned. For ambitious founders and dedicated managers, 120% should be the goal for your employees, and they will become the linchpin of your growth.
While it’s a simple concept, spotting the 50, 80, and 120%ers in your workforce, or during your recruiting process, can have a seismic impact on your team’s productivity. By recruiting 120%ers and building a work culture that gets the absolute best out of your employees, everything from customer satisfaction to productivity can soar.
Recruiting 120%ers
There are two ways to build a team of 120%ers, and managers should combine both strategies to get the best from their employees. Firstly, tailor your recruitment process to spot 120%ers and make the best possible hire.
1) Seeing a Candidate’s Potential: Your interview process should be designed to understand a candidate’s performance. Ask open-ended, behavioral questions about times they went above and beyond in a past role, and inquire about their outside interests. I’ve found that when employees are invested in hobbies or working on a side hustle, they tend to bring that passion and energy into work.
2) Hiring for a Cultural Fit: Recognize that the best employee only thrives in the right environment. Use your interview process to determine whether new hires are going to gel with the rest of the team and whether their attitudes and beliefs align with your work culture. For example, is collaboration a central value for your organisation, or are employees expected to thrive working independently? Turning Your Team into 120%ers
As a believer in nurture over nature, I don’t think any employee is destined to be either a 50%er or a 120%er. In my experience, high-achieving employees aren’t born, they’re moulded in the right environment. Building the right startup culture lets you get the most out of your team.
1) Placing shared values at the heart of your corporate culture gives your workforce an emotional connection to your business’s goals. When employees are just working for a paycheck, they become, at best, 80%ers, surviving the work environment with “just enough”. But when there’s an underlying vision and a shared passion, your team will never be satisfied unless they’ve given their all.
2) A culture that promotes creativity, innovation, and independence will breed 120%ers because employees are empowered to go beyond the brief. As a manager, you can’t envision every opportunity that might arise for a more efficient or productive project outcome, and when your culture values creative problem-solving, employees step up.
3) Define outcomes as more than just box-ticking exercises. By defining the success or failure of a project in qualitative as well as quantitive ways, for example, by asking “what did we learn” and “what can we do differently in the future”, employees won’t stop working when they hit targets, metrics, or milestones. They’ll know there’s more to discover even when goals have been met, ensuring projects are returned with greater breadth and scope than initially expected.
When every team member is giving 120%, the impact compounds across your startup. You’ll have coders like Rodrigo Schmidt, who was integral in fixing issues with Facebook’s early chat feature, representatives like Cobbs with her profound impact on Southwest’s customer loyalty, and a sales team like Chevrolet salesman Joe Girard who sent personalized greeting cards to over 150,000 customers.
Conclusion
A team of 120%ers will go above and beyond expectations, but that doesn’t mean the manager’s role takes a backseat. It’s crucial to foster the right environment for these employees to thrive in, and provide appropriate feedback to ensure workers keep giving their all.
While promoting independence and responsibility, managers should ensure that the achievements of 120%ers are never taken for granted. Recognize, appreciate and remunerate your over-achievers, and facilitate career development for these employees with continuous learning and growth opportunities, such as AI training when new tools are released.
Every business should be looking to get the most out of its employees, but in lean startups or early-stage development, a team of 120%ers will create exponential gains for your new business, being more creative, innovative and productive. What’s more, these workers will become the foundation of a work culture that strives for excellence.
