WHY SMART PEOPLE UNDER-PERFORM?

There are so many complaints sounded by organizations about poor performance of their so called talented employees despite the fact that their HR departments have been recruiting those best people from well known universities.

Management has set clear vision, missions and goals. Those goals are realistic and organization resources have been also considered and made available. Rewards system also has been set so clearly that employees will know what they will receive for goal accomplishment. Sophisticated and expensive systems have been provided that would make complex and difficult marketplace situations easier to be analysed. What went wrong?

Many organizations emphasized only in how well they set business goals without considering that there will be potential problems when their employees only attach their lives to those business goals and their career goals but don’t set their other personal life goals.

Potential serious long-term downside can occur in organization when the ratio of energy and time that goes into creating and achieving the business goals outstrips the need of their people to manage a more balanced-life on the other hand. The personal life of employees indeed affects organizational progress in one way or in another.

It is certainly responsibility of the employees themselves to manage their own life. It is important that they understand the greater purpose in their lives, more than just financial and career. All those academic ‘A’ scores that they have achieved must also be complemented by achievements in other areas of life so they will have a stress-free unrestricted life.

Life is a journey and new journey starts every single day of our life. Life is an endless loop. Hence we need to renew and revitalize ourselves everyday. We often heard this wisdom from Confucius "He who will not economize will have to agonize," and though it is true that success in this area of life provides us with the resources to pursue goals in other areas of life, but we have additional things we can and should do - not only to live a balanced life but also to enrich it. For example, we can contribute to the societies by joining organizations that represent our values. We should remove stress from our daily life by having adequate rest and a sensible exercise program because a healthy body supports an active and creative mind. We certainly should spend more time with family and friends.

Not everyone though very smart and work hard can be as great as Steve Jobs but as he said in one of his famous speech “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

What we do matters and every choice we make should make a difference in our lives and others as well. Make choices that will bring not only success but also joy and happiness.