Operationalizing Performance
Introduction
The measures from the adaptive profile possess several characteristics that are central for understanding, implementing, and managing individual and organizational performance. This note lists and comments on these characteristics.
Making Sense of Performance
The adaptive profiles inform about how people can best perform in their jobs and how they will likely be more efficient and productive. Thanks to the visual representations, the analysis is immediate and quantifiable. The inverted shape of the adaptive profiles—its symmetry across the average—also instantly tells about the behaviors that will create the opposite effect, that is, inefficiency and lack of productivity.
When taken at a group level, the information clearly shows how the group functions and the conditions for its efficiency and performance. By aggregating individual results at a group level, it is possible to get a quantified indication of how diverse people are within the group, and how the group may depart from some expected behaviors.
Adaptive Profiles Characteristicss
The adaptive profiles have eight key characteristics which are the following:
- Quality of the measures—what's measured—on how people perform, function, and act, which is at the crossroads of their preferences, interests, mindset, how they think, value, and feel about how they behave, their beliefs about who they are, and how they interact in their environment.
- Quality of the result—the adaptive profile—that allows a concentration of significant meaning and continued learning about people and their organization.
- Adaptive nature of the measures as revealed in the Role profile, for understanding people in context, the energy it takes to adapt, and people's engagement.
- Behavioral aspect of the measures, and their ability to be observed, learned, shared, and validated.
- Accuracy of the measures, including their general validity, reliability over time, and predictability.
- Utility of the measures in a broad range of applications for recruitment, management, leadership, and organisational development.
- Universality of the measures. The measures are independent of a person's age, gender, cultural origin, education, skin color, religion, and political affiliation.
- Work-relatedness of the measures. The measures apply to any position in organizations, regardless of the industry, country, or hierarchy level.
Making Sense of Other Concepts
By nature, the concepts and adjectives we use to describe people and their behaviors have different meanings. A limited number of factors—in the case of GRI, four—allow us to analyze these concepts and bring accuracy regarding their expression.
The factors were originally evidenced by analyzing a large number of adjectives used to describe behaviors. With these factors and appropriate measurement, we can describe how other concepts are being expressed, such as the way of being creative, delegating, communicating, directing, managing, leading, mentoring, teaching, learning, solving complex problems, etc.
Understanding Adaptation
By understanding the energy it takes to adapt and the implications on someone's engagement and productivity, the measures invite asking new questions about how people can better fit and perform in their jobs. The adaptive profiles help people adjust their behaviors within reasonable limits. They inform about how the adaptation will happen and the eventual development and support needed.
When analyzing a person's development with the adaptive profiles over time, it becomes evident that the Natural profile doesn't change much, but the Role profile may. Statistics on a sample of 1,200 individuals who answered the GRI survey several times during a period of up to 10 years confirm this observation. The more the Role profile is different from the Natural profile, the more adaptation the person perceives.
Fit with Job Expectations
Whether a person is suitable for a job also depends on whether their adaptive profile aligns with it, which is not just about intelligence, skills, or experience. Instead, it’s about how those other characteristics develop and adapt, as the adaptive profile can reveal. The mismatches seen between the Natural and Role profiles or between the Natural and Effective profiles and the position’s profile[1] are likely to lead to practical adjustments at the individual level or in the job.