id: 1214,8
title: Distribution of employee impact.
date: 2024-03-17

Distribution of employee impact.

Conventional HR wisdom holds that employee performance follows a bell curve and results of performance reviews should follow this curve fractally—everything is roughly relative to nearby neighbors, there should be no truly outstanding teams or divisions.

The reality is that impact follows a power law distribution: there’s a long tail of average to middling impact, while a small handful—the top ~20%—are markedly more valuable. Research puts top performers at 3–4x more useful than average performers. Steve Jobs saw the difference as those who get company process versus those who understand its true purpose.rH5