The Plateau Principle

A few years ago I was helping one of our team members work through a decision they were making regarding leaving our group. It was tough – they were one of our top producers, a student of our business, a friend and someone that the entire organization looked to as a success story.

After reviewing consecutive years of earnings in which each year was easily a six figure income, I came to the conclusion that the challenge surely wasn’t money or the relationship we had between us. To complicate matters, they couldn’t express the reason why they really wanted to make a move (because it didn’t make logical sense), and I had to dig really deep to find an answer.

After some serious thought and the ultimate reality that we were going to lose this individual, I came up with the following description of what was happening from a business perspective and called it “The Plateau Principle.” Check it out:

“In any organization (business, sports etc.), an individual may ultimately reach a high level of achievement in which they can rise no further and thus they have reached their plateau. Unless the individual leaves their current environment (company, team etc.) and finds another organization to demonstrate their abilities and utilize their skills… they will soon digress in performance and attitude.”

What Leads to Plateau:

1. A real need on the part of the individual for something fresh and new.
2. Challenges with management that strain relationships to the point that severing the relationship is imminent.
3. The individual believes that their current opportunity is not attractive or is less than they deserve based on their perceived value of themselves.
4. The individual has risen to a higher level of responsibility but finds that they are incompetent to consistently perform at previous level of success. The resulting frustration can serve as a catalyst for any of the above three factors.

How to Prevent Plateau:

1. Provide opportunities for employees to try new lateral roles within the organization.
2. Cultivate an atmosphere of respect that allows employees to understand their role and management’s role within the organization.
3. Keep employees perceptions in line with reality.
4. Don’t give away opportunities and autonomy… make employees earn them over appropriate periods of time – no shortcuts.

Hope this helps the next time you have an opportunity to help an individual or an organization work through this very real issue.

TK