Part 3: 10xPrinciples on Nurturing the Nature: An Employer’s Guide to Evincing 10x Performance

The first post of this three part series, Defining the Principles of 10x, establishes that 10x performers are awesome problem solvers. Those with 10x potential already possess significant natural gifts and an employer can help these employees to realize their potentials — by nurturing their natures. The second post in this series explores how to find latent 10x potential in employees. This final post in the trilogy addresses the question, “ How should an employer nurture this high performance in employees with 10x potential?”

It’s illustrative to look outside the tech field for examples from another profession. The myriad baseball statistics captured and finessed by a team’s data science group provide quantitative measurement of 10x performance. Those who break into the ranks of professional baseball swim in a rarefied pond, with a small minority rising to 10x status. In their excellent 2019 book, The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformists Are using Data To Build Better Players , Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik demonstrate that player development during the off-season has transformed many middling players into superstars. In baseball, player development is achieved with technology that captures an individual player’s mechanics and aided by learned coaches who interpret results, suggest changes, and implement efficient, directed training. Any player in major league baseball is already starting with superior raw material. However, improvement at these elite levels is what can differentiate a middling player from a star.

Beware of making an easy analogy between baseball players and employees of a tech company. Moreover, a baseball player does not become a top performer from skill improvement alone. Success in baseball also comes to those with acute situational awareness on the field and the nimbleness to quickly modify behavior. That is, not only must a baseball player master his craft, but he must also have a unique ability to quickly triumph over the challenges that present themselves. Although we laud rookies who perform superbly, they are compared to other rookies or to seasoned players at the starts of their careers. Although a rookie may exceed the raw power of a seasoned player, the rookie lacks the experience of the wily…