On understanding people

by Mr. Marten Runow

Hard to quickly understand people?

It is often promoted in the Business world that it is very hard to quickly understand people. Man is often looked upon as illogical and the human factor is something you cannot predict with any high degree of certainty.

Lack of basic knowledge about life

Not having any basic knowledge about the laws that actually govern life you would have to agree that that would be the case. Today, however, there is easily accessible knowledge on how the mind really works, which we use successfully in Performia. As soon as you start understanding that, situations regarding people start to brighten up considerably.

We are all individuals

It is true that every man and woman on this planet are individuals and are different from one another. Even so, there are still a lot of similarities between those who can get things done and who can really help an organization and those who cannot.

Helium versus sand concept regarding production

To give you an easy to understand concept of how you can look on a person as regards their contribution or lack of it within a group, (an example used often in Performia presentations) envision him or her as a helium balloon connected to a bag full of sand. The helium represents the productive and pro-survival urge of the individual, whilst the sand represents that part of a person which is weaker and which is irrational and which makes it harder for him or her to rise. "The sand" could be a flaw in personality, low education, low ethics level or anything else that would make production harder. I think you will agree that no person is totally without any sand.

The group

If you imagine several balloons tied together you will get the idea of how a group within which each person is supposed to contribute to the overall upwards motion through the gas provided, should operate.

How is the individual – sand or helium?

When you look at an individual, the important question becomes —How is the relationship between gas and sand, with this individual? If you have much more gas than sand then you can expect that this individual will move upwards and will be productive and will contribute to the overall upwards motion of the group. If, however there is more sand than helium it will not even get off the ground and in order to "Fly" this individual would have to be picked up and carried by the helium of others. Simply put, the person with more sand will drag others down.

Performers

An ideal scene would be a person who has a lot of helium and just a small portion of“sand. In Performia we call these individuals Performers. The worst case would be almost no helium but a lot of sand.

No perfect equilibrium

One thing is clear. There exists no person in whom there is a perfect equilibrium, meaning who has exactly the same force upwards as force downwards—or as in the balloon example, a system that is just hanging still in the air and moving neither up or down.

People who go and up down

The truth is that one is either helping or one is preventing. The only exceptions are those people who are emotionally unstable and who go up and down like a roller coaster, who are one day extremely productive and the next day they are apathetic. This is a specialised problem about which you can obtain more information from your nearest Performia Office.

Looks very nice

Another specialised type of balloon is one that may look very nice, pumped-up and sometimes quite colourful, which promotes itself as having almost no sand at all, but which hides within its rubber skin small, hard-to-detect needles which could cause other balloons in close contact with it, to lose their helium fast and thereby lower the overall power of the group or Company.

Adding a new balloon

If you wish to add a new balloon to the ones you already have you want to make sure that it will be helping the whole organization to rise. This means you can’t allow, for any reason, to bring in a balloon that has too much sand as the result may be your Company descending rather than ascending.

You don’t need to replace a sandbag!

Another truth, which funnily enough has surprised a lot of managers, is that when you get rid of a "sandbag" (a balloon with more sand than helium), the whole system moves upwards EVEN IF YOU DON’T REPLACE THE "SANDBAG"!!!

Speed up the motion of the rest

This means that a person who is not contributing to the motion, when removed, will, by their absence, speed up the motion of the rest. It may look surprising, but if you look at it from this simple viewpoint it makes sense.

You don’t need to replace the destructive
or not productive person

All too often, we hear comments like, “I know this person is destructive or not productive, but I cannot replace him therefore we have decided to keep him”. This is like saying “I know this sandbag drags the other balloons down but as long as I don’t have a replacement, I can’t afford to get rid of this sand”. Yes, you can definitely afford to do that and if you have ever doubted such a decision and then changed your mind and done it anyway, you know exactly what I am talking about. The rest of the group starts producing better overall results long before you even find the replacement.

Tools to help you hire performers

You have probably experienced different versions of the above and in Performia we aim to help you understand and have the tools to hire mainly those who have more helium than sand and who will help to expand your business.

Mr. Marten Runow
Founder of Performia International