A new approach in extending the vitality curve to teams

General Electric's Jack Welch brought us the 20-70-10 rule: the "vitality curve," which has become a cornerstone of employee performance management and has both been applauded as vehemently criticized. Hence, could this vitality curve be extended from applying to individual employees to applying to teams? In this research, we aimed to reply to this question by generating a new vitality curve that concentrates on teams – rather than individuals – and address some of the vitality curve's criticism.

We researched more than 1,600 teams with over 110,000 employees in the form of a questionnaire: more than 300 different ones in our sample. We checked how employees scored on their questionnaire and divided them - comparable to Jack Welch's vitality curve into three groups (Red, Amber, Green) within each team. Roughly 40% of the teams had predominantly green employees, 40% mostly amber employees, and 20% had a large contingent of red employees. Various control variables related to using questionnaires did not influence this 40-40-20 mix.