The video presents a framework for classifying employees into four distinct categories based on their productivity and behavioral impact on an organization. 1. Performers (≈20% of staff) generate roughly 80% of results, require minimal direction, and can exceed expectations; examples include elite athletes and highly reliable cleaners. 2. Doers (≈60%) are willing, follow instructions, and range from highly effective to merely cost‑neutral; with proper guidance they can be elevated to performers, but they should not occupy senior roles that demand autonomous output. 3. Troublemakers (≈17.5%) are emotionally unstable, still want the organization to succeed but their inconsistency creates problems, consuming about 80% of managerial attention. 4. Suppressive (Spiky) People (≈2.5%) actively undermine others, seeking to weaken peers to protect their own fragile position. The speaker emphasizes the strategic importance of identifying these types, especially avoiding hiring or retaining suppressive individuals, and recommends focusing recruitment on performers and effective doers to shift the productivity curve upward, potentially achieving dramatic gains in overall output. Illustrative role‑play clips and anecdotes (e.g., Roger Federer, a pilot, a warehouse manager) are used to reinforce each category’s characteristics and managerial implications.
Chapters
And we can actually classify all these different people. And we put them on this little chart here. Where at the— on the left axis here we have the number of people. Across the bottom we have actually how productive the person is. How much they produce in a certain unit of time. And The first category we have is what we call performers. And these performers make up 20% of the workforce and contribute 80% of the result. And it doesn't mean they do 80% of the work. But you know, if you had a group of 10 people, normally there's 2 people will be performers. You pull one of them out and it has quite a devastating effect on the whole team. You pull both out and the organization now won't exist. And so they're very important to any organization. And we actually define a performer as a person who's delivering the expected result without any external pressure or the need for, you know, constant direction. You just put them into the job, you give them the minimal amount of, you know, training and give them what the game plan is, and they get in and they just start producing. And quite often, you know, they can produce a lot more than you expected. And they'll actually deliver to you, you know, faster than expected. And we have, you know, some fun little examples of this. So you might recognize Roger Federer here. Let me just get this across there. Because in sport, you know, to be the top, you've definitely got to be a performer.
Take the bottle, put it on your head, because it's way too sensitive. It's crazy. I can't believe you talk about it. Put the bottle on your head. All right. Make sure you don't move, okay? What's he saying? You guys want to maybe get out of the way a bit. All right. Don't be nervous. No pulling. Okay. Make sure you don't move, okay? One more. Good ball, Alex. All right, here, one more time. We got it. All right, thanks, sir. Take it easy. See you later. What's next? That was good, right?
We have this other one with the You know, it's the guy I'd want to be my pilot if we were flying.
Where's his right wing? He's just lost his wing.
Oh my God! Is that James? Is that James up there? Oh my God!
Oh no! No! Me!
Damn. There's a few little dynamic aerodynamic issues there that I don't think match a big plane. But it's still fun anyway. Let's just believe it was real. So the next one. we look at is what we call doers. And the doers make up 60% of the workforce and they range from being very effective doers to being not so effective. In actual fact, down here is what we call the zero productivity line. So, where a person comes in and whatever they contribute is what they cost the organization. So, they just zero themselves out. And a doer is basically someone that's really— they're generally willing, they want to help, they want to see the organization do well. And, but they like to have instructions and they like to follow things that occur and they like to have something arrive and be given what to do. And they're very important. And I have another little example of an effective doer. No way. Hey, that's a nice fish. Nice job. So the thing with effective doers, you know, with a little bit of the right instruction and allowing them some extra control and responsibility, it's not so hard to get them to be performers. And with performers, they can be anywhere in the organization. It's very important that they're high in the organization. You don't really want doers that are very low in the organization. In senior positions because the external pressure is usually low production. And so when you have someone senior, you need them producing all the time and not needing any external pressure to actually get the job done. But you can have performers, could be the cleaner. If you have a cleaner that just, you come into your office or your factory every day and have no attention on the cleaning, it's just always done and everything's always locked up and handled and taken care of. This would be a Cleaner who's a Performer. But quite often, I find that with Cleaners mostly, you get as effective doers because you always gotta leave them little notes and they forget to do something. So it's not so easy as you go down the organization to always get Performance. But they can be anywhere in the organization. The next category we look at makes up 17.5%, and we call these guys the Performers. Troublemakers, and they're really the emotionally unstable balloons. And we define these guys as basically, you know, they create— the people that create most of the problems. They're still willing and they still want things to go well, and, you know, they can still contribute, but they can't— they're not so stable in their contribution. And like I said earlier, when they're not contributing so well, quite often they start to cause trouble. and actually become a problem or start to cost the organisation money. And they're very tough to manage. We find that 80% of management attention is actually trying to manage the situations these guys create. And I have another little video here which I'm sure the owner of this warehouse would have liked to have known he had one of these troublemakers. The next category is actually the spiky balloons. We call these guys Suppressive People. The reason we call them Suppressive is the spikes actually are, you know, really the effect of them is to slow others down and to stop people really producing or fulfilling their goals in life. And they make up only 2.5% of the workforce. And we define these people as, you know, really it's like they're the true source of the trouble. You see the troublemakers, it's like they're still willing and they still want to see things go well for the organization. But the spiky balloons, the suppressive people, you know, they actually want to see the organization and the people in it not do so well. And their motivation is actually to make others— excuse me. Their motivation is actually to make others weaker and to do less in life. And the reason they have this motivation is a little bit of a catch-22. Because generally we believe that people operate the same way we do. So if you're pretty honest in your dealings and you like to make sure that people get a good exchange in every transaction, you sort of believe that everyone else is that way. And if you're someone that actually like wants to bring others down and make them worse and maybe even destroy them, then of course you'll start to believe everybody else is that way. And so for these people to survive, they believe that they need to make others weaker so that, you know, people can't attack them so easily. Because if someone really remains really strong, then, you know, it's dangerous for them. The thing is, is they have very little helium for themselves and they actually really struggle a lot in life and have very little power. So, they do this mostly by trying to introvert people. They try and get someone that's out there and producing and trying to reach their goals and pushing hard. They try and get this person looking inwards that maybe they're not as powerful or as strong as they really are. And I have another little video that just goes over Hey, Alex.
Oh, hey. You were working so hard. Everybody really appreciates all the hard work you've been doing on the new design. Thanks. You really outdid yourself. Thanks. You've certainly worked a lot harder than Miles. You should take some extra time off this afternoon after lunch. Oh, I can't. Well, everybody else is. We all deserve it. And you most of all. Seriously. I'll see you later. Okay. Okay. Oh, so you know what Alex told me? She's taking all the credit for the new designs. I know. And after all the hard work that you did, Myles. And I don't want to say anything bad about her, 'cause I know she's your friend, but she is taking her normal 2-hour lunch right in the middle of our busiest time. She's probably drinking, too. Oh, but that looks really good. Yeah, with a little— maybe a little more blue.
You know, unfortunately, you know, there's one or two ways to do something really right, and there's unlimited ways to actually destroy something. And to wreck something is so easy. You know, if we wanted to rip this room apart between us, we could probably do it in a few minutes. And then it would take, you know, 2 weeks of 3 or 4 tradesmen to fix up the damage. And so you don't need to be so intelligent, but some of these guys are unbelievably intelligent And that's where it gets really tough. And, you know, I'm sure to the boss, this guy could actually look really good. Like, wow, he's so valuable. And sometimes, you know, one of the indicators of having one of these people around is that it's someone you're scared might leave. Because they tend to be really good at, you know, hoarding communication lines. And, you know, if they're not in for one day, it's like you really feel the effect because you don't know what's happening and no one else knows what's happening. And so if you have someone that's actually really productive, they make sure that they always leave you feeling more free. And so they have a day off and they've already told you everything's going to happen and they give you all the information you need and then if, you know, you don't feel like you rely on this person so much. So, you know, for sure we really need to make sure that, you know, we know who these guys are and we don't allow them in the organization because it's too expensive to find out once they're in. And sometimes it can take a lot of years. I've personally had some of these guys work for me as well and it's taken 5, 6 years to finally— it wasn't until actually after they left we realized when we see the whole area they were in charge of actually do so much better, we go, wow, it's amazing. We haven't even replaced the person yet and look how much better this area is doing. We want to make sure we can keep our hiring— let me just put this up. We want to keep our hiring over in this region so we only hire or bring people in that are effective doers and performers. Then we can actually move this whole curve over so that we have no suppressive people in the organization. You know, much less trouble and a lot higher percentage of, you know, performers and effective doers. And this move, you know, is something that can actually create 100% productivity gains. We've seen a lot of our clients do even more.
