Sticking to The Script: How to achieve high performance under pressure

Sticking to The Script

How to achieve high performance under pressure

“We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.” — Archilochus

I n the weightlessness of space, blobs of water settled around Luca Parmitano’s eyes, nose, and mouth. His cooling system had sprung a leak while on a spacewalk and he needed to remove his helmet soon or else he would drown. He signaled for help from his teammate Karen Nyberg.

Before removing his helmet, Luca needed to return through an airlock, an area which allows transition from the vacuum of space to the pressure of the space station. As Karen re-pressurized the airlock according to her training, she worried that it might take too long to complete and Luca would drown. She could go against her training and re-pressurize much faster. However, that would likely result in Luca’s ear-drums bursting from the sudden pressure. How should Karen react under such high stakes demands?

The problem of high demands

In mentally demanding situations, research shows that human performance frequently degrades (as in here and here). Experience and training can improve performance and reduce mental demand. However, when mental demand does increase, performance can suffer despite training. For instance, a study was conducted where surgeons in training practiced surgical tasks using a simple simulator. As they practiced using the simple simulator, their performance improved and their perceived mental demand decreased. However, when they were asked to perform those same tasks on an animal cadaver (a significantly more realistic scenario), their perceived mental demand increased and their performance degraded.

When your team encounters demands such as an urgent deadline or an unhappy customer, it is valuable to remember that situations like these can cause performance to decrease. Sometimes this may be exacerbated by abandoning the training and practice that your team has put in over the years. Your team might be tempted to “rise to the occasion” and come up with a new innovative way of working in order to meet the demand. This will likely not work well given that the method is not proven and your team has not trained on it.

Preparing your team for high demands

Practice. Practice. Practice.

NFL teams do not wait till a game starts to figure out how they will play. They run plays over and over. They condition themselves. They study their opponents.

The same can be used by your team. A major deadline or a customer complaint is the Superbowl for your team. The rest of the time needs to be spent establishing procedures and practicing those procedures. When the demands increase, then your team will be able to leverage their practice.

I work for a company which builds a cloud-based application. Every day we deploy enhancements to the code. We go through the exact same process each time. While the actual changes might be different each day, the process we use to deploy is exactly the same. When we encounter an urgent client need, we are able to quickly make the changes they need. However, we do not deviate from our daily process of deployment. This ensures that we do not make stupid mistakes when we are under pressure. We do not re-invent our processes. We do not take extreme measures. We do not panic.

Does this mean no change in procedure can ever happen? No! However, changes should be carefully thought through and then practiced by the team before using them during high stakes scenarios.

Practice. Practice. Practice.

The pressure in the airlock slowly increased. While Luca’s communication equipment had malfunctioned due the water, he was still able to give an OK hand signal. He would be alright. After the pressure safely stabilized, Karen and her team rushed to remove Luca’s helmet and wipe the water from his face.

Karen had been trained repeatedly on emergency procedures and that training paid off. If she had panicked, she might have rushed the re-pressurization and needlessly destroyed Luca’s eardrums. Luckily she kept a calm head, leveraged her training, and ensured the safety of her team.

Takeaway:

During slow times, develop repeatable methods and practice them with your team. When your team is under pressure, leverage the methods you have practiced. Do not expect your team to come up with new creative methods under pressure.

Thanks for reading! My name is Noah Wheeler and I am the VP of Product at Simple Interact. If you liked this, you might enjoy “Making More Sandwiches: 4 steps to building repeatable business processes.”