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32 | The Lion King
Top
Performer
or Critical
Performer,
Which
Are You?
By Bayo Odeyale
E
very organization, whether a service
or product company, is established to
address a need as a going concern.
The success of any organization therefore
depends on how well it is able to deliver on
its focus areas and solutions. Attainment
of corporate goals may forever remain a
strategy or a design on the computer unless
activated by key employees with a strong
discipline of execution.
To organizations, key employees are top
performers and critical performers. A popu-
lar misconception on the part of many is
that ‘top performer’ is the same as ‘critical
performer’. Without fear of contradiction I
will like to state unequivocally that they have
different meanings and play different roles
in an organization. To the business they are
however two important sides of the same
coin.
Top performer status is conferred on em-
ployee whose quantity and quality of output
significantly exceed expectations whereas
Critical performer status is a designation of
a job, not the person in it, and it is based on
the relative importance of a position to the
organization’s success. For clarity it is pos-
sible for a poor performer to occupy a criti-
cal role, in such a situation, the challenge is
for the management to make appropriate
changes.
All organizations have critical performer
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