To succeed in todays workplace, you need to demonstrate strong performance across three criteria.

When Senior Management talks about hiring "Great" people who "Fit" the Culture and will perform well, what exactly are they talking about?  A lot of them do a poor job clearly defining the aspects of performance so I am going to do it for you.  I will be citing finding from a Psychologist named Jeff Johnson who looked into this and in 2003 published a paper called Toward a Better Understanding of the Relationship Between Personality and Individual Job Performance (2003). In general terms, performance has three major components which can than be further broken down into more specific components:

Job Performance - Refers to being effective in tasks that make up one's job.  Every job (Chef, Server, Accountant, Director) can be defined by the tasks performed in that job. This component may be further refined into such factors as: adhering to procedures, oral communication, knife skills, recipe execution, etc.  This dimension of performance is clearly JOB orientated and refers to performing ones job effectively.

Organizational Performance - Refers to being a good organizational citizen and helping make the organization run smoothly by contributing in ways that go beyond ones particular job. This component may be further refined into such factors as: conscientious of others, not showing up hung over, not getting stressed out and being committed to the company.  This dimension of performance clearly goes beyond ones job and refers to being effective in contributing to the overall welfare of the ORGANIZATION.

Adaptive Performance - Refers to the ability and willingness to cope with uncertain, new and rapidly changing conditions on the job. This component may be further broken down into such factors as: adjusting to new equipment/ procedures, working under different managers, changing restaurant environments and continuously learning new skills.  An environment of change often requires the organization to work around projects rather than well-defined and stable jobs, which in turn requires workers who are sufficiently flexible to be effective in poorly defined roles.

This is not the black and white, task-focused work environment our parents lived in.  Gone are the days when an employee could say "That is not in my job description" or "you pay me to cook, not do dishes" or "why should I do the inventory, I do not get paid to do the inventory".  Drawing a line between your job and the organization is career suicide in todays work environment. Today the effective performer must make additional contributions that go beyond their job description.  Task Performance will always be relevant because that is the job we are hiring employees to do.  But the expectations now are for employees to go beyond their jobs, to help the organization in whatever ways present themselves and to adapt to rapidly changing work conditions.  To be a top performer in todays work environment, one must exhibit a wider range of skills than our parents had to.