I should add, on the journey to the evidence that finally killed the stack rank we did some interesting empirical work. This was in collaboration with an organi

I should add, on the journey to the evidence that finally killed the stack rank we did some interesting empirical work. This was in collaboration with an organisation that actually became part of the dreaded firm. Still, it was good stuff. In F1 racing you have a unique opportunity to study employee performance empirically. Why? Well - every year there's a new car. The components that get on the new car get on it because of an empirical process. If your team can lighten something, create more drag or reduce drag or increase power then your component gets on the car. This insight allowed individual performance to be tracked. The results - well it turns out that for almost the whole workforce it's luck; future performance cannot be predicted from past performance. You screw up one year, but then the next you knock it out of the park. There was an exceptional group though. Being in the highest percentiles in successive years was strongly predictive of being in the highest percentiles for future years. In the follow up work this was investigated and it was found that managers could reliably identify the individuals in their departments that would be in the group of "persistent out performers". There was no similar group of low performers.