What  does people optimization entail? In some of our discussions and feedback on our website, we've received comments along the lines, "You can't optimize people..." To which our response is, REALLY!  Further, we say, if you are a manager over a group of people and you don't have a mindset where you are consciously trying get the most from or make the most of the productivity of your people, then you are probably a bad manager.  Some are hung up by making some value judgment on the "act of optimizing" but the reality is, an effective leader and an inspiring work culture both can create the conditions for optimizing your people, that is optimizing your productivity, innovativeness, teamwork, efficiency etc...

Optimizing  the performance of people in organizations involves such things as the following:

• The capability to attract/recruit and select only top performers
• The capability to understand your people and leverage their strengths and minimze the need for them to deploy weaknesses
• Accurate assessments of your people on skills, capabilities, motivations, natural tendencies and styles, competencies....
• The capability to influence them to accomplish the right things (effectiveness)
• An effective process for on-boarding into new positions
• The ability to ensure your people have their skills, competencies and knowledge developed to maximize their performance
• Creating an engaged (inspired) responsible employee, 
• Managing  and creating a  high performance environment
• Effectively dealing with compensation issues
• Accurately assessing  employees on key performance factors,
• Removing poor performers
• An effective succession planning process
• Building highly effectiive teams of these people
• Understanding variation in individuals and groups so that you can accurately assess and solve problems
• Aligning your people ideally  with their best roles in processes and in achieving goals/tasks.

We'll discuss these issues going forward.