Opportunity-to-Perform Bias: Are Your 'Top Performers' Actually Getting the Best Opportunities?

Every year, the same three people present to the leadership team. Every year, they are rated top performers. Leadership concludes they are simply the most talented. Nobody asks the obvious question: who decided they would be the ones presenting?

The forgotten third factor

Most performance models focus on two things: can the person do it (ability) and will they do it (motivation). In 1982, Melvin Blumberg and Charles Pringle argued this was incomplete. Performance, they wrote, is a function of capacity, willingness, and opportunity — the tools, information, resources, assignments, and conditions that let someone perform. Peters and O'Connor (1980) had earlier catalogued 'situational constraints' such as inadequate information, equipment, time, and support that suppress performance regardless of ability.

Evidence that context carries performance

Boris Groysberg, Linda-Eling Lee and Ashish Nanda studied more than a thousand star equity analysts who switched firms. On average, their performance fell after the move and stayed lower for years, unless they moved with their teams or to firms with stronger capabilities. Part of what looked like individual brilliance was the platform: research teams, client access, and firm resources.

Opportunity is also unevenly distributed. Babcock, Recalde, Vesterlund and Weingart (2017) found that women were more often asked, and more often said yes, to tasks with low promotability — organising, note-taking, committee work. Over years, one group accumulates visible stretch work while another accumulates necessary but invisible work.

Where opportunity gets allocated

A simple opportunity audit

1. List the high-visibility assignments from the past 12 months.
2. Record who received each and how they were chosen.
3. Compare by team, location, work arrangement, gender, and other relevant groups.
4. Compare with who carried low-promotability work.
5. Check whether top ratings track opportunity more than they track evidence of skill.

Limits and caveats

• Some people earn more opportunities by performing well with smaller ones; not all concentration is bias.
• Groysberg's findings come from financial analysts; the portability of performance varies by role.
• Equal distribution isn't always the goal — fair, transparent allocation is.

The missing variable in performance

For decades, performance was often modelled as ability multiplied by motivation. Blumberg and Pringle (1982) argued that this formula misses a third factor: opportunity. People need the tools, information, time, authority, and assignments to perform. Without opportunity, even able and motivated people cannot show results. Peters and O'Connor (1980) similarly described 'situational constraints' — missing equipment, information, budget, or help — that lower performance regardless of effort.

How opportunity gets distributed

• High-visibility projects go to people leaders already know and trust.
• Stretch assignments are given informally, often through personal networks.
• Better clients, territories, or products go to people seen as 'safe hands'.
• Remote or part-time employees are less often considered for urgent, visible work.
• Employees with caring responsibilities may be assumed, without asking, to be unavailable.

Each choice looks reasonable. Together they produce a loop: people who get opportunities perform visibly, which confirms the decision to give them opportunities. Others are rated lower, not because they are less able, but because they had less to work with.

Run an opportunity audit

Fixes

• Major projects are open to expressions of interest.
• Managers can list who got stretch work this year and why.
• Calibration discusses opportunity, not only outcomes.
• Opportunity data is reviewed by group for fairness.

Worked case: the stretch projects that always went to the same people

In a consulting firm, the partner chooses who works on the biggest client projects. He picks people he has worked with before, because it feels less risky. Over three years, the same small group gets the high-profile work, gets the best ratings, and gets promoted. Others, with similar ability, get smaller projects and 'solid' ratings. When asked, the partner says he simply picks the best people — and from his point of view he does, because they have the most visible track record.

The difference in results started with a difference in chances. The review then treated the results as proof of ability. This is the loop the concept warns about.

An opportunity audit

Fixing the allocation

• Post stretch opportunities openly and let people express interest.
• Ask the person making the choice to name at least one candidate they have not worked with before.
• When rating results, record what resources and chances each person had.
• Review the audit by group (for example gender, location, part-time status) once a year.

Common mistakes

• Treating a track record as pure ability, without asking how the record was built.
• Giving a stretch project to a new person without support, and then using their struggle as proof.