Want to Improve Organizational Performance: Focus On These Three StrategiesLeading a small-to-medium sized business means wearing many hats. But there are three hats business and organizational leaders need to wear more often to focus their attention to dramatically improve results.
These three strategies are the same strategies that separate mediocre athletic teams from champions:
- Creating and Implementing a Compelling Vision/Strategy
- Developing Leadership & Teamwork Throughout the Organization
- Consistent & Specific Performance Management
Below is a brief summary of each of the three strategies:
Creating and Implementing a Compelling Vision/Strategy:
On the first day of training camp every team member on an athletic team knows its vision is to get to the championship game. Every coach has developed a focused strategy based on his/her team’s personnel to achieve that goal. Few small to medium sized businesses or not-for-profit organizations invest enough time and energy in this area. Instead of being proactive and innovative they are continually reacting and adjusting to the marketplace and competition.
Additionally, it is rare to find employees at all levels of an organization that can clearly articulate their organization’s vision and strategy. Athletes can.
The second component of this involves strategy implementation. Teams that win championships execute their strategy better than the rest. A strategy is worthless if not implemented according to a plan and monitored for course corrections along the way based
on environmental feedback.
Developing Leadership & Teamwork Throughout the OrganizationAthletic teams can only successfully perform if there is high-trust between individual teammates playing along side each other, and high-trust between the coaches and the overall team itself. The most important trait for a successful team is trust.
There are two aspects of trust:1) Do I trust this person to get the job done at the necessary level and to follow through on what they say they will do?
2) Do I trust that the other people with whom I am working have the best interests of his/her teammates and the organization in mind when they make decisions and take action?
If the answer to those two questions is “Yes,” a high-trust environment exists. If not, chances are the team or the organization is not going to reach high levels of success.
Additionally, coaches cannot make decisions on the field of play while the game is in motion. Therefore, there are team captains assigned to make decisions and call plays in the heat of the action. Likewise, businesses and non-profits that want to be highly successful need to develop leaders throughout their organization to make decisions to allow the efficient and effective implementation of the strategy. This also is key to perpetuating long-term success through effective succession planning.
Consistent & Specific Performance ManagementThere are three things every sport has in common; a scoreboard, scorecard and statistics. These are used to track who’s winning, who’s losing, and how each participant is performing. It then gets broken down to measure individual team member’s performance.
Most small to medium sized companies are poor at performance management. As a matter of face just about every system of performance management I’
ve encountered has created more harm to employee morale and organizational culture than it helps improve performance.
There is one litmus test for an organization’s performance management system.
Ask these two questions:
- Is it improving the individual and collective performance of our organization?
- Is it enhancing our organization’s culture in terms of morale, motivation, and attitudes?
If the answer to one or both of those questions is “no” than your performance management process needs an overhaul.
It is imperative for the leader of an organization to continually monitor these three components of a high-performing “champion” organization. I encourage all my clients to do so on a quarterly basis by very simply grading their organization on a 1-10 scale in each of the three categories and identify small ways to raise the bar in each. By doing so, any organization can become a “Champion Organization” through small, constant and never-ending improvements and experience dramatic results within a relatively short period of time, three to six months.
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Weisman works with organizational leaders to improve personnel, productivity and profits by helping them “Create a Champion Organization,” one that communicates effectively and takes action with commitment towards a shared compelling vision. His latest White Paper Report is “The 7 Deadly Sins of Organizational Leadership Communication” and is available as a free download at
www.HowToImproveOrganizationalCommunication.com
