Floor Risers and Ceiling Risers

Distinguish between improvements that prevent bad outcomes vs. improvements that enable great outcomes

Evan LaPointe
Improve strategy, influence, and decision-making by understanding your brain

Floor Risers and Ceiling Risers

"Think of everything we've talked about today. It might help to put some language to it as floor risers and ceiling risers. Because your company has a horizon of performance that you're heading into, and there's a bottom end of that range and a top end of that range." - Evan LaPointe

What It Is

Every improvement initiative either raises the floor (prevents bad outcomes, reduces variance) or raises the ceiling (enables great outcomes, expands possibility). Understanding which type you're pursuing helps set appropriate expectations, measures, and resource allocation.

Many teams chase ceiling-raising initiatives when their floor is too low—resulting in brilliant ideas undermined by basic failures. Others obsessively raise floors while never exploring what's possible above.

How It Works

Floor Risers

What they do: Ensure performance never drops below a certain threshold

Examples:

  • Better meeting structures → eliminates waste, prevents miscommunication
  • Process documentation → consistent execution, fewer mistakes
  • Quality standards → minimum acceptable output
  • Risk management → prevents catastrophic failures

Outcomes:

  • Faster execution (fewer redos)
  • Fewer mistakes
  • More predictable results
  • Higher baseline competence

Feeling: "Our worst days are now much better"

Ceiling Risers

What they do: Enable performance levels that weren't previously possible

Examples:

  • Strategic vision work → unlock new markets
  • Innovation time (Alpha/Gamma modes) → breakthrough ideas
  • Removing "inconceivable" mental limits → explore bigger possibilities
  • Talent acquisition → capabilities you didn't have

Outcomes:

  • Access to previously impossible outcomes
  • Competitive differentiation
  • Market leadership potential
  • Transformed business model

Feeling: "We can now do things we couldn't before"

The Strategic Question

Before any improvement initiative, ask:

  1. Are we raising the floor or the ceiling?
  2. Which does our current situation need more?
  3. What's the right balance?

Diagnosis: When Floor Is Too Low

Signs you need floor risers:

  • Basic mistakes happen repeatedly
  • High variance in execution quality
  • Simple things take too long
  • Predictability is poor
  • You're "brilliant but unreliable"

Diagnosis: When Ceiling Is Too Low

Signs you need ceiling risers:

  • Strategy conversations feel "inconceivable"
  • Same playbook for years
  • Market is shifting and you're not
  • Top talent is bored
  • You're "reliable but unremarkable"

How to Apply It

  1. Label every initiative: When proposing an improvement, explicitly state whether it's a floor raiser or ceiling raiser

  2. Set appropriate metrics:

    • Floor risers: Measure variance reduction, error rates, worst-case outcomes
    • Ceiling risers: Measure new capabilities, breakthrough moments, best-case outcomes

  3. Balance your portfolio: Like investment allocation, you need both. A reasonable starting balance might be 70/30 floor to ceiling for mature organizations, 30/70 for early-stage.

  4. Sequence appropriately: Some ceiling raisers require floor raisers first. Can't do strategic vision work if meetings don't function.

  5. Communicate differently:

    • Floor raisers: "Our performance will never drop below X"
    • Ceiling raisers: "We can now explore Y that was previously impossible"

Example: Applying to Meetings

Floor raiser: Implement priming before decisions

  • Outcome: Meetings stop wasting time on misaligned premises
  • Metric: Time to decision, rework frequency

Ceiling raiser: Create permission for Gamma thinking in meetings

  • Outcome: Meetings can now produce strategic breakthroughs
  • Metric: Quality of strategic insights, ideas generated

Both valuable. Different purposes.

When to Use It

  • Prioritizing improvement initiatives
  • Setting expectations for what an initiative will achieve
  • Diagnosing why performance is stuck
  • Balancing operational excellence vs. strategic innovation
  • Communicating initiative purpose to stakeholders

Source

  • Guest: Evan LaPointe
  • Episode: "Improve strategy, influence, and decision-making by understanding your brain"
  • Key Discussion: (02:06:05) - Introduction of floor/ceiling framework
  • YouTube: Watch on YouTube

Related Frameworks

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