MIND OVER METRICS: REVOLUTIONISING LEADERSHIP WITH BEHAVIOURAL AI -

the untapped 40% of Performance

/ By Tyler Donaldson, Lead Data Scientist, OLSPS /

You read that correctly. Over 15 years of embedded development in the banking industry, the Propel™ process has shown that mindsets and behaviours explain between 3350% of the difference between high and low performing employees.

Not a surprising finding for anyone with experience in leadership or line management. After all, managing mindsets and behaviours is what leadership is all about. A good leader can do this instinctively, but how well? Can they effectively do it at scale?

What if there was a way to mathematically measure mindsets and behaviours, and their influence on bottom-line performance and KPIs?

This is the question that a team of ex-McKinsey partners, industrial psychologists, and awardwinning data scientists set out to answer 15 years ago. And an answer they found.

The fundamental problem with the traditional approach to industrial psychometrics, still broadly used today, comes down to ‘applicability’. Yes, the personality-type style tests we have all done at some point are based on reasonably solid, rather interesting, academia. The question is, how do they relate to your work environment, vision, and performance? Does your personality sit well in the role and company you work in? What should you be doing to self-improve, exactly? How do your managers and leaders know, at scale, what mindsets to instill or behaviours to nurture? It is all very well having a personality profile, but what then?

“What gets measured gets managed” – Peter Drucker

As you may have inferred by now, the Propel process is a novel way to mathematically measure mindsets and behaviours, and then link them to bottom-line performance and KPIs. But how is it better than the ye olde approach using the personality-type style tests we are familiar with?

For a start, the process is situationally aware. Rather than applying a general theoretical framework, it actively measures the ‘emergent behavioural framework’ actually present in a company. An environment-specific framework, informed by industrial psychology and 15 years of analytics. Why is that important? Well, a mindset that is a strength in one company or team may be a weakness in another. There are many mindsets and behaviours whose outcomes are environment dependent or driven. “He had a great CV and fantastic references; I just can’t understand why he is struggling now working with us”.

Secondly, it empowers leaders and line managers to manage performance inputs, rather than outcomes, using hard data. Reactionary management can and does work when done well, but using data to affect the outcomes upfront is of course better. Managing proactively also fosters trust and positive sentiment in those you manage, rather than being overly focused on solving negative outcomes.

Thirdly, it offers a data-driven way to better interact with employees. Learning how to effectively, and positively, interact with an individual to achieve optimal performance can take time that is often not possible at scale. Having situationally aware, performance informed mindset and behavioural insights to reference offers a significant head start.

Lastly, and perhaps most significantly, it links the situationally aware behavioural framework to hard (and soft) performance metrics. This allows everything from individual growth and team management, to recruitment, to be driven by data in a targeted and informed way. The spin-off to that is agreement, trust, and alignment. The Propel process, run multiple times to measure progress, has shown 5-15% annual performance uplift, and recruits that outperform by 100%.

In other words, the revolution of a mathematically backed, situationally aware, framework has unlocked the ability to tap into an area of management, personal growth, and leadership that is otherwise soft and under-managed.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” – Peter Drucker

What is culture though? Culture is the overlap and interaction of mindsets and behaviours of a collection of individuals within an organised group. Culture can be nurtured, driven, carved, and manipulated, but it is foremost, and fundamentally, ‘inherent’.

The question, then, is “what is the ‘current’ culture” within a team or organisation? How do we get from that to the desired culture that aligns with company values?

While the second question can only really be answered by experienced leaders and effective strategy, being able to confidently answer the first question provides a pivotal starting point. It may seem obvious what the culture is in a smaller team or company, but what about at scale? What about confirmation bias and change?

An interesting outcome of the Propel project is that the situationally aware, measured behavioural framework answers question one using hard data. At a leadership level, understanding the prominent behavioural-mindset types, and in what ways they best perform in your company, is an invaluable tool. Particularly for large organisations, where having an intuitive feel for it is near impossible.

So, while culture may eat strategy for breakfast; why not make culture a datadriven strategy?

Deeper into AI – an unstoppable force

The Propel process, developed directly in industry for over 15 years, has its roots in predictive analytics and machine learning. But it is far from outdated. New advances in generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) are pushing the envelope even further by capturing huge amounts of crossdisciplinary knowledge to back up predictive Propel insights and create a conversational interface to foster every day, simple usage of the insights. This is perhaps the most exciting development yet – in a world where we are drowning in data and insights, the biggest challenge is to effectively use it and cut through the noise. While the Propel process is supervised by trained consultants capable of delivering proven action on those insights, the advent of Propel AI is scaling that out in a highly accessible way.

Just the beginning

The Propel team is as excited about the AI future and what it brings as it is passionate about continually pushing the years of novel, and fascinating, behavioural analytics. The future of behavioural AI is bright, and is on course to revolutionise leadership and management.