The BaR Concept – The Break a Record Concept

The Break a Record (BaR) Concept

What is the Break a Record (BaR) Concept?

The BaR Concept is an innovative performance improvement mindset, which states that whenever a team (or individual) is challenged to do better than their personal best for a limited time, they will engage in the challenge and achieve a record-breaking performance.

Threat and Challenge Theory

The BaR Concept is rooted in the biopsychosocial (BPS) model of challenge and threat, which recognizes that when pursuing a goal, both psychological and physiological factors play a role in determining performance. Specifically, cardiovascular responses are triggered by the body in response to how an individual perceives a situation – as a challenge or a threat.

When an individual perceives a situation as a challenge, the heart rate increases, arteries dilate, and blood flows more efficiently. This physical response can lead to better performance and decision-making. However, when the individual appraises the situation as a threat, the arteries constrict, leading to reduced blood flow, poorer performance, and decision-making.

The BaR Concept aims to harness the power of challenge to improve team performance by challenging them to break their personal best during a BaR Event. To ensure that the team perceives the BaR Event as a challenge, it’s essential to make sure that:

The target is achievable but not too easy or too difficult (i.e., the Goldilocks Principle).
The team has access to the necessary resources, such as materials, manpower, time, technology, tools, and more.

By embracing the BaR Concept, teams can tap into their full potential and achieve record-breaking performances that were once deemed impossible

The Goldilocks Principle

The Goldilocks principle is another concept which strengthens the BPS model. According to James Clear, in his book Atomic Habits;

“The Goldilocks Rule states that humans experience peak motivation when working on tasks that are right on the edge of their current abilities. Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.

The human brain loves a challenge, but only if it is within an optimal zone of difficulty. If you love tennis and try to play a serious match against a four-year-old, you will quickly become bored. It’s too easy. You’ll win every point. In contrast, if you play a professional tennis player like Roger Federer or Serena Williams, you will quickly lose motivation because the match is too difficult.

Now consider playing tennis against someone who is your equal. As the game progresses, you win a few points and you lose a few. You have a good chance of winning, but only if you really try. Your focus narrows, distractions fade away, and you find yourself fully invested in the task at hand. This is a challenge of just manageable difficulty and it is a prime example of the Goldilocks Rule.”

This principle is very relevant in the BaR Concept when setting the target for the BaR Event. The target has to be challenging, not too much, but not too low.

Current Gaps

Although several Continuous Improvement already exist, most of the times these fail to engage the employees and therefore are not sustained on long term.

Continuous Improvement

A culture of Continuous Improvement is a critical success factor to achieve a competitive advantage. There are several continuous improvement methodologies, such as; Lean Six Sigma, Kaizen, and TQM.

But, despite the proven advantages of these programs, between 60 to 80% of programs fail to deliver the targeted results (Young, 2001). One of the difficulties is the ability to sustain these continuous improvement programs.

Although sometimes these programs are successful, they can result in inferior performance and low motivation.
One of the main reasons that programs like these fail is because they are focused on data and statistical tools (Gerger, 2016). In doing so, it fails to engage the employees and hence missing to “address the human side of the process” (Young, 2001). The problem is that managers neglect the ‘soft’ (McCabe, 1996; Wilkinson, 1992) people side of quality management. Thus the human resource aspects of quality programs are not given their deserved emphasis (Walker, 1992).

But, with the BaR Concept, process improvement is a team building event at the workplace which functions as an employee engagement tool.

Resistance to Change

Everyone is very familiar with the term resistance to change. Naturally every human being is averse to change. So when we impose changes or improvements onto our teams with new ways of doing things, the first reaction is to resist it and hinder the change.

But, with the BaR Concept, we trigger the challenge to the team and they implement their ideas and improvements so that they can beat their personal best during the BaR Event.

Lack of Employee Engagement

According to Wikipedia, an engaged employee is “one who is fully absorbed by and enthusiastic about their work and so takes positive action to further the organization’s reputation and interests. An engaged employee has a positive attitude towards the organization and its values. In contrast, a disengaged employee may range from someone doing the bare minimum at work (aka ‘coasting’), up to an employee who is actively damaging the company’s work output and reputation.”

From a recent study carried out by Gallup, it was found that 87% of the employees around the world are disengaged. This lack of engagement can have a direct impact on organizations performance and productivity, hitting the bottom-line.

Indeed organizations with high employee engagement levels had a 2-4% improvement in operating and net profit margin. Whereas those with low engagement showed a decline of about 1.5-2%.

The BaR Event is a team-building activity that kindles a sense of pride which drives motivation and employee engagement. It generates a feeling of hype and anticipation that makes the employees look forward to the day at work.

In the meantime, as a result of the BaR Event the process performance improves which will reflect in a better bottom-line for the organization.

What do we want to achieve?

The aim of the Bar Concept is to develop a habit of continuous improvement through a method which is accessible and affordable to everyone. We want to create positive experiences and promote a grwoth mindset to be able to challenge everyone to do better than their personal best, so everyone can maximize their potential.

Create a Habit

The BaR Concept is based on the BaR Cycle. The BaR Cycle is a 3-phase cycle which creates a habit.

According to Charles Duhigg in the Power of Habit, a habit is based on a 3 step cycle; cue, routine, reward.

In the BaR Cycle, the cue, is the first phase where we trigger the challenge. The second phase is where the BaR Event is carried out (routine). Lastly, the reward is the pride and achievement of breaking the record.

Learn from Positive Experience / Events

According to Earl Miller, a neuroscientist from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Success has a much greater influence on the brain than failure.”

He believes the findings apply to many aspects of daily life. Failures are left unpunished but achievements are rewarded in one way or another. Such as when your teammates cheer your strikes at the bowling lane. The pleasurable feeling that comes with the successes is brought about by a surge in the neurotransmitter dopamine.

By telling brain cells when they have struck gold, the chemical signals them to keep doing whatever they did that led to success.

This means that after recognizing the effort done by the BaR team to beat their personal best during a BaR Event, there is a bigger chance that the team will go through the routine again, creating a habit, and not just a one-time activity.

Mindset

The Break a Record Concept, also challenges a fixed mindset. Whenever someone is challenged to do better than their best, they start to think differently because they have to achieve something that they never achieved. The team has to think out of the box.

The BaR Mindset is based on the belief that if we are challenged to break our personal best, we will think out of the box, be more creative and outperform.

Gamification

A BaR Event is an organized team building activity at the workplace which engages employees to improve the performance of a specific metric.

The process improvement methodologies that are currently available focus a lot on numbers and can miss the people’s side.

The BaR Events are a form of gamification which act as team building events organized at the workplace to enhance employee engagement and ultimately improve the process performance.

State of Flow

According to Csikszentmihalyi in his theory of Flow, when challenged we go into a state of Flow. Providing that we have the necessary skills to achieve the challenge, there is a greater sense of happiness. In a state of Flow people freely release their discretionary effort. So they are more productive, more service-oriented, less wasteful, more inclined to come up with good ideas, take the initiative. Generally, they do more to help organizations achieve their goals than people who are disengaged.

The BaR Concept aims to put the employees in a state of Flow by giving them a challenge through the BaR Event. The challenge is that they have to do better than their personal best just for one time.