So, I had lunch last week with the FranklinCovey representative to the DoD. I am taking over the leadership of the “7 Habits on the Inside” program and needed to make that connection. During our conversation, I asked a question I’ve always wanted to ask of this company.

“In your evaluation of the program, “7 Habits of Highly Effective Military Families” do you take into account the idea that people who tend to come to marriage events also tend to care more about their marriages, have higher educations, more accessible social skills etc and just will tend to do better regardless of what seminars they attend? Do you adjust your numbers based on that?”

“It’s a fair question,” she replied, “however, we don’t get those numbers from the Army so, no, we don’t track that.” She went on to tell me how they do track success and how they operate their training. It was fascinating. Here’s the basic idea:

In every organization, about 20% of the group are top performers. They are going to perform no matter what. They will do well under bad leadership, excel under good leadership, and when given some tool to succeed with, will do even better.

There is also the bottom 20% who will not do well no matter what tools you give them. They just don’t get it. They are not destructive, they don’t get fired, just ignored. In actuality, most organizations just tend to work around them.

Then there is the middle 60% who tend to move in either direction based on leadership. It is this middle 60 that the FranklinCovey organization looks to influence.

I found this statistic fascinating. It resonates with my own experience. The central question I ask myself as a leader is:

What am I going to do today to lead that 60% to excellence? How will I help them make the best choices? How will I inspire them? They will tend to one direction or another – what can I do today to help them move towards the top?