Performance vs. Potential – it’s the only way to look at who’s a star and who’s a scrub in your organization.  You can also use it for lots of other purposes, namely comparing the relative merits of Brat Pack movies starring Molly Ringwald.  OR - which version of Van Halen was better - David Lee or Sammy?

You’re not following me?  I was up a couple of weeks ago at the bswift Annual Conference in Chicago, where I spoke about The 9 Faces of HR – a primer on how to morph the performance/potential grid to evaluate HR teams and HR candidates you’re thinking about hiring.

Here’s one of my slides – Using Performance vs Potential to evaluate the 3 different versions of Van Halen.  Breakdown after the slide (click the slide for a bigger version):

The breakdown is pretty simple.  Van Halen under David Lee Roth?  Good if not great performance (record sales), but wow - what potential.

Van Halen with Sammy Hagar?  Great performance, sold a bunch of CD's - but not as much depth with the potential as with David Lee.  Which is deeper with the potential to change the way a kid views playing the guitar?  "Unchained", or "Love Comes Walking in"?   I rest my case.

Sadly, most of you don't know that Van Halen tried a third lead single after Sammy pissed everyone in the band off - the lead singer of Extreme - a dude named Gary Cherone.  Low performance, low potential.  Code For: "Retire" and get ready for the David Lee Roth reunion tour.  Where's my spandex pants with tassles?

From the high potential, good performance David Lee era:

"You say, I cannot get there from here, baby
Then I don't care where I'm goin'
Here's to your thin red line
Mmm, I'm stepping over...

Thought you'd never miss me till I got a fat city address
Non-stop talker, what a rocker
Blue-eyed murder in a size five dress

Change, nothin' stays the same
Unchained, and ya hit the ground runnin'
Change, ain't nothin' stays the same
Unchained, yeah ya hit the ground runnin"

Have a great weekend.  One of my favorites below, email subscribers click through for the video.