For me, it was all about pinball. Video games were far in the future. There weren’t computers for the masses, so there wasn’t even pong. But there was pinball.
I spent an awful lot of time standing in front of a pinball machine, feeding it nickels, flipping the flippers, watching the ball, and listening to the score ring up. Scores on most machines reached astronomical levels, but pinball wasn’t about the score as much as getting to play again.
That was the big payoff: you got to play again. That’s the Pinball Principle. If you win, you get to play again. I think it’s a great way to think about talent development.
In pinball you get to play again when you win. In talent development you should get to move on to a bigger challenge. You get to move on based on your performance, not potential.
You can use the most sophisticated tests and apply savvy analysis to guessing who the winners will be in the talent development game. We call them “high potentials.” But in the end, potential is just a guess. As Harold Geneen used to say: “Only performance is reality.”
People grow and develop by meeting challenges. So give them challenges. Give the ones who do well the opportunity to move on to bigger challenges.
The Pinball Principle is all about moving from guessing potential to gauging performance. Do it as soon as you can.
