Here is an excerpt from an article written by John Boudreau for Talent Management magazine. In it, he asks, “Have you given your people the right opportunity to perform?” To read the complete article, check out all the resources, and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

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How do HR practices affect organizational performance? Decades of research has explored this question, and a simple framework can help leaders understand the results. Being more evidence-based about talent management may be a matter of knowing physics terms.

Kinetic energy is energy in motion. Potential energy refers to the energy of something in one position, such as a bow and arrow before you release the arrow. When you pull back the bow you create potential energy, which becomes kinetic energy when you release it. Whether your arrow hits the target depends on your aim and the proximity of the target. That’s the “opportunity” for the energy to do something valuable.

These basic ideas of kinetic energy, potential energy and proximity are surprisingly powerful as ways for leaders to understand why people and organizations perform.

You are probably familiar with the phrase, “ability times motivation equals performance.” That idea is not quite complete. Even the most motivated and capable people may not perform if they are not given the right opportunity.

For example, you need to be out front meeting customers, not in the back stock room, to use your motivation and capability for customer interaction. “Ability times motivation times opportunity equals performance” is actually a prominent model in the world of human capital strategy, called the AMO (ability-motivation-opportunity) framework. In our book Beyond HR, Pete Ramstad and I show how talent capacity combines this with COM (capability-opportunity-motivation).

While leaders may not remember complicated models of human performance, they can easily remember the mnemonic of talent COM or AMO.

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To Read the complete article, please click here.

John W. Boudreau, Ph.D., Professor and Research Director at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and Center for Effective Organizations, is recognized worldwide for breakthrough research on the bridge between superior human capital, talent and sustainable competitive advantage. Dr. Boudreau consults and conducts executive development with companies worldwide that seek to maximize their employees’ effectiveness by discovering the specific strategic bottom-line impact of superior people and human capital strategies.

His recent books include Beyond HR: The New Science of Human Capital, with Peter M. Ramstad, published by Harvard Business School publishing, in 2007, and Investing in People, with Wayne F. Cascio, published by Pearson, in 2008, Achieving Strategic Excellence in Human Resource Management, with Edward Lawler (Stanford University Press, 2009. His latest book is Retooling HR: Using Proven Business Tools to Make Better Decisions about Talent, published in July 2010 by Harvard Business School Publishing.