Most of us are just average. That’s what statistical analysis tells us. This means that there aren’t many construction pros who always run profitable jobs and that there aren’t many construction pros who are so bad they should consider going pro with a different type of work.
Reversion to mediocrity is the phenomenon where if someone has great results or performance now, their next job or performance will likely be worse – average or below average such that over time their overall performance becomes close to average. This is where someone that has early project success shocks their employer and runs their next job with negative results. Reversion to mediocrity is also the phenomenon where someone performed poorly in the past only to rebound with an average or better than average performance. Sometimes this shocks leadership and coworkers.
In more than one instance I’ve seen someone leave a company where they left as a top dog only to fail at their next company and role. The opposite has been true, as well. Someone might have left pre-emptively or was let go because of poor performance but when they land somewhere new they do quite well for themselves.
Reversion to mediocrity can be more publicly seen with high level executive moves. Most executives get to where they got because they had a pretty good run of profitable work. They might also know the right people. When they change companies, it can be a big deal and is often published in business and industry related news sources. There are very few executives that change companies that can carry on their previous success in their new role. Their move might have changed their work structure and they might not know all of the right people in their new positions. Based on their previous performance, it might seem that these executives are poor performers when they are simply average. They just got bitten by the reversion to mediocrity bug.
So what does this mean for construction pros? It means that very few of us are exceptional. Most of us have good, bad and mediocre jobs. Exceptional people have less bad jobs but will still struggle through a rough job or two. Poor performers will have a good job or two. As many engineers have been told by crusty supers and PM’s, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” As industry leaders, we need to be careful in how we rate and judge performance. Don’t go all in on someone because of great results on a few jobs and don’t write someone off because of a rough job here and there. In sports, the future hall of famer could have a bad game while the benchwarmer gets hot. If we focus on a small sample size like one game or project, our judgement will be off.
We should take extra care to identify success and failure independent of project circumstances. Does someone succeed or fail because of or despite project conditions? When we get better at identifying the outliers who don’t end up at mediocrity, we’ll build a better world.
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