It’s often been said that people go into communications because they don’t do math.

While I will leave it to others to assess whether that statement is true or false, I will say that I am rather fond of these two performance equations I learned from Mario Moussa:

Performance = Skills x Motivation

There is an elegance to this mathematical notation. The essence is that the elements forming performance are multiplicative – that is, you will get a higher result by increasing both factors even by a little. Also, if either of the elements is zero, the result is zero. This formula quietly speaks volumes about the importance of employee engagement.

Performance = Potential – Interference

This formula brilliantly illustrates the cost of organizational noise and distraction to team performance. Simply put, to maximize an organization’s potential, you have to minimize interferences. These may include political in-fighting, silos, mis-aligned objectives and information clutter.

Now this is the kind of math this communicator can get excited about!