How often have you said or heard one of your managers say, “I would love to be able to increase my teams’ performance?”
If increasing your team’s performance is your goal, you may be chasing the wrong target. Performance is a by-product rather than a goal in itself, as with happiness in a relationship.
Like high performance, happiness is a desired state; yet if we chase it, eludes us.
Neither can successfully be established as the primary goal.
Happiness (as with performance) is the result of something – for example meaningful work or a good marriage. Happiness is the result of focusing on establishing understanding and respect in a marriage, not of a focus on happiness. In the same way, high performance comes by focusing on developing key elements in your company, not by focusing on the performance itself.
High-performing companies have three key elements: a clear, compelling strategy in alignment with the company values and people committed to the cause.
Clear, Compelling Strategy
Remember playing broken telephone – you all sat in a circle and one person initiated a message which was then passed around the circle, whispered from ear to ear until the last person repeated aloud what they heard? Usually, it was a garbled distortion of the original message. Company strategies are often communicated in a similar fashion.
A strategic communication approach, where it is left for each level of leadership to communicate to their direct reports, has the same ‘broken telephone’ effect. Understanding (and commitment) decreases with each communication at each level it is passed down. Even if the strategy statement remains clear, does it engender commitment? Does anyone care? A professionally worded statement may be clear, but is it compelling?
For a strategy to translate into focused performance, it must be clear and compelling.
Imagine the focus in a company where everyone has a clear picture (and can tell you in their own words) of the company’s reason for existing, where it is headed, and what its strategy is.
If you want to test the uniformity of the direction your employees or team are working towards, survey (formally or informally) and check the uniformity in understanding of:
- Why the company exists?
- Where is it headed?
- What is its strategy?
Personalisation of a clearly communicated, well-understood strategy may well give you as many different wordings as people, however, you will be able to tell if they’re all describing the same picture. If they “get it”, they will have personalised it.
Alignment
Apart from other obvious benefits, a clear picture of the company’s strategy and goals allows alignment with personal goals. This strong tangible connection between personal and company goals means the company’s agenda is their agenda. Companies that show the “performance difference” have a strong alignment between personal and company goals and philosophy. They are open in their communication around goals and expectations. They are a partnership grounded in an understanding of simultaneously moving employer and employee towards their strategic goals. Synergy is the product of this partnership.
VeriFone doubled its revenues in 5 years (to more than $300 million) and former CEO, Hatim Tyabji, was very clear about the importance of alignment between personal goals and company philosophy, expectations, and direction. They used alignment at the recruitment stage. Before hiring a new employee they were very clear about the quid pro quo of life at VeriFone. The quid pro quo, in return for all the freedom we offer, is a tremendous emphasis on accountability. Some hear the message and realise “This is not for me.” Fine. Others start but do not fit the mold and leave. Left, are those who align and this is seen as integral to the company’s success.
Energy, Initiative, and Commitment
Alignment leads to personal commitment. A personal commitment to the success of the business unlocks a passion that energises us. A community of people committed to the same thing not only feeds that energy but also increases the accountability and the expectation of success. The focus isn’t performance – the focus is building a company of people committed to a clear and compelling strategy; people whose personal agendas are met by meeting the company’s agenda – performance is the result.
When the focus is performance the interaction between the company and employees becomes transactional which undermines commitment. However, personal commitment is made stronger by being part of a community (all who work for the company) who are committed to the same agenda.
The result?
Even obstacles are approached with initiative and a commitment to seeing the strategy work.
A ‘High-Performance Culture’ is the result of a focus on:
- A clearly communicated picture of a compelling strategy.
- Open communication around both company and personal goals and an expectation that they will be strongly aligned. Even to the point where it is part of the recruitment process.
- Recruiting for, and rewarding energy, initiative, and commitment together with a clear expectation of accountability.
Take one of our assessments to gather the right information and capitalise on your team’s strengths
The idea of leaders’ aligning individuals’ purpose with corporate purpose is not a new one. It has, however, shifted over the years.
In the late ’80’s and early ’90’s talk of considering your people’s purpose would’ve been seen as soft. Too nurturing for the hard world of business…where decisions were
“Just business. Not personal”.
The mid ’90’s brought a realisation that connecting individuals’ purpose with the corporate purpose increased engagement. The focus was on influencing to create that alignment.
We then had Daniel Goleman introduce Emotional Intelligence and Jim Collins talking about ‘getting the right people on the bus”. All of it connected in some way with a leader’s ability to align individual, team and corporate Purpose.
A shift was becoming evident, based on realisation that true leaders don’t try to influence purpose. Rather, they focus on discovering, or noticing the Purpose that drives the individual and finding connection between individual and corporate purpose. Jim Collins’ ‘right people’ is about hiring those whose Purpose drives them in the direction that the organization wants to go. It is not something we manipulate but something we look for and, where aligned, invite to join us.
The old adage ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ shows this clearly. A friendship that is only likely to last until the common enemy is done away with. That is, it will last as long as the Purpose of the friendship is still held by both parties.
I would like to suggest another layer to the force of Purpose. I worked for a retailer with a very transactional approach to their staff. They attracted staff whose main life Purpose lay outside of work. They invested only what was needed to keep getting the pay cheque that supported their purpose outside of work. The common purpose was strictly transactional.
Those with talent and drive, who looked to the work itself as a place to work out their Purpose, were soon crushed and or left. The retailer and the talented individual, if they’d looked for it, had strong alignment. The retailer’s structures and approach become the ‘iron curtain’ that kept the common purpose from driving success.
The extra layer I invite you to contemplate is; “What level of Purpose do your organisation’s structures and leaders invite others into?” (Where does commitment look more transactional like with the retailer or with the ‘enemy of my enemy’ and where does it look more like the deep bonds of brother’s in arms; a commitment grounded in Purpose that draws on our talent and drives us to success?)
We believe this is critical for leaders to pay attention to.
Over the past few weeks, Gil, Anita and I have been having many in depth conversations on what we want to accomplish with Spacious Complexity; how we want to serve others and how we will grow and be with each other as we build this work together. We bring a richness of experiences, a variety of perspectives and individual life challenges to our work that makes our commitment to Spacious Complexity, not work in the traditional sense, but a life affirming experience for all of us which can also be challenging at times.
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In our collective years of corporate life we, the creators of this material, have had the privilege of meeting and befriending amazing, talented people in a broad variety of leadership circumstances. In our consulting careers we continue to have the joy of meeting and working with high functioning individuals and teams. Skilled leaders with vision, commitment and business acumen. We have also stumbled onto an awareness of 2 critical areas that most of even these leaders struggle with. Two areas that hold them back from bringing their full value to their work.
Dealing with Ambiguity
The difficulty in making decisions in ambiguity. Where a need for control or a need to know and get things exactly right hinders making an “optimal range” decision. We believe it is possible to equip leaders to make sound decisions even in ambiguity.
Strategic Organizational Agility
“Organizations can be complex mazes with many turns, dead ends, quick routes and choices. In most organizations, the best path to get somewhere is almost never a straight line. There is a formal organization – the one on the organization chart – where the path may look straight, and then there is the informal organization where all paths are zigzagged. Since organizations are staffed with people, they become all the more complex. There are gatekeepers, expediters, stoppers, resisters, guides, Good Samaritans and influencers. All these types [and more] live in the organizational maze. The key to being successful in maneuvering through complex organizations is to find your way through the maze to your goal in the least amount of time while making the least noise [or leaving the least wake]. The best way to do that is to accept the complexity of organizations rather than fighting it and learn to be a maze-bright person (emphasis added).” FYI For Your Improvement, Lombardo & Eichinger, 236
Hidden forces, such as gravity, govern all of nature. People, organizations and societies are also governed by inescapable forces. These forces are at the root of much of the complexity in organizations. Environments where people and ideas thrive, are structured in congruence with these forces. Environments with a stifling effect, have structures and mindsets incongruent with these natural forces.
Our Vision:
Through this process participants will:
- Understand their organization as a living organism
- Breathe life into their organization so that it lives out its’ full potential as a living organisms.
- Lead from an understanding that living organisms initiate rather than just support; go beyond simply maintaining to creating. They see and build beyond what is.
This is a process full of doors to other world views. It is a process that provokes thought rather than provides answers. It demands that you work out the answers for yourself rather than receive them predigested.
We believe that finding the spaciousness within complexity necessitates a stepping back into a quiet ‘space’ that observes the ‘societal laws of human nature’ that underpin and are party to creating that complexity.
The blog invites you to join us in this process of discovery. A process of rethinking, observing, questioning and integrating an expanded way of dealing with complexity. An expansion that, paradoxically, creates a spaciousness within complexity. To do this we will be introducing you to a theory – the Theory of Spacious Complexity. A theory and process that invites you to suppose things were different to what you’ve understood them to be. To look beyond the complexity… to pause and notice the forces at play. Forces. Societal forces akin to the force of gravity and other the forces of nature. To discover and experiment with the impact of working with the forces we suppose be truly hardwired into the world. We will be introducing these forces in the next session and the remainder of our time will be expanding our understanding of the forces and why and how it is of real, practical importance for us to see and work with the forces.
We are suggesting a theory here and will be stating it as truth… know that it is the best truth based on what we see – be part of helping us make it more robust… or bust it open. Be part of the test – expand our visibility.
All theories are flawed. No plan… or theory… survives its collision with reality – it is our best guess based on what is visible to us at that point.
We welcome you as part of the testing community!
If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.
Brené Brown is a researcher who believed this to be true. In our organisations we have many who hold to this maxim. Yet, on another level, we know that there are things – messy, intangible things – that can’t be measured…at least not quantitatively.
Brené Brown started her research looking for a way to measure the intangible and ended up with some surprising insights that are not only useful to life, but also to organisational life.
Watch this video and let me know what your thoughts are.
Below are a few questions to stimulate your thinking:
As a leader, be vulnerable with yourself and think honestly about the following:
How worthy am I of love and respect?
Am I enough?
How true does the following statement appear to me “Vulnerability is the birthplace of strength and creativity – Denying vulnerability is to deny creativity”?
What would change in how I manage/lead my team if I see us as ‘enough’?