Jet aircraft pilots know that a certain deadly combination of airspeed, glide angle, and throttle is a sure-fire recipe for a crash landing. When they’re in this position, just a little more power brings down the nose and accelerates their rate of descent. The pilot’s position is called ‘behind the (power) curve’ because a marginal increase in power does not create the expected uplifting effect.

A number of banks these days find themselves somehow ‘behind the power curve’. Short-term operating results are not adequate, neither is long-term competitive position. More pressure on people does not improve the bank’s performance, instead, the rate of descent accelerates. Interestingly, in that case, banks usually focus on mediocre performers and attempt to bring them up to a certain acceptable level.

Banks should take a different approach. The best individual performers — in most companies — are generally the most strongly motivated. Singling them out should reinforce their efforts to excel and motivate others to aim for excellence, too. Pick out the stars and incite them to achieve even greater things. Set (very) challenging improvement goals for ‘great’ performers. Even ‘good’ performers are inspired by the improvement goals of the best of the best, and their results will also improve. Whatever the response, it must be selective and more than incremental. Pouring on a little more power won’t work.

Group productivity can best be improved not by striving to bring the mediocre players up to speed but by pushing the best to raise their standards of excellence still higher. Enter: mentoring — a highly effective motivator. As a young and ambitious Ph.D. student and already a serious equity trader, I was in awe when I met some of my mentors, Nobel laureates like MIT’s Bob Solow and Princeton’s John Nash. There’s nothing quite like meeting and being challenged by ‘living libraries’. Education is good, but development is better. It’s like putting wings on a B-52.

Three other factors influence the productivity of the bank’s main assets, the best of the best, and, hence, the rest:

☐ Always challenge the status quo. Any bank that does not continuously and systematically challenge long-held assumptions and opinions about its people — often ‘sacred cows’ — is probably missing an opportunity to improve asset productivity.

☐ A clear definition of what ‘extraordinary professionals’ truly are. Without a clear statement that spells out excellent people — including their goals — chances are good that the bank’s main assets will be underutilized.

☐ A strong linkage between the bank’s strategies and the strategies of clients. It is always difficult to ensure high asset utilization if the linkage is weak. Alignment between the bank’s core skills — essentially, the talent of people — and the needs, priorities, and expectations of clients is crucial.