Momentary greatness is common – sustained greatness is rare. You may have experienced it yourself. I have. I can hit an amazing golf shot or make a 25 foot putt and then, reality sets in. My next drive goes 30 feet rather than 300 yards and I can easily miss a 2 foot putt! The same challenge exists in organizations. The great ones are able to consistently Excel at Execution… how?
Tag: performance
This past weekend I spoke to a group of leaders about how to strengthen the teams in their organization. I chose today’s topic: Community. Although the concept of community is at the core of what creates a High Performance Team, it is also one of the twelve best practices to unlock organizational performance.
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A Simple Idea With Huge Potential
I have a new team at the chicken. We were chartered about six months ago. All of the players are extremely talented, and each is gifted in his or her own way. Each member also understands and embraces the power of the team.
High Performance Organizations do things lesser performing organizations don’t – today’s post is a perfect example. HPOs create clarity on what’s important throughout the enterprise. The fact that clarity is so illusive in many organizations is a mystery unto itself. Organizations lack clarity not for it’s inherent difficulty, rather for the diligence required from leadership. A lack in clarity is a lack of leadership.
The Chess Not Checkers project set out to discover the “secrets” of High Performance Organizations (HPO). Our team spent years to determine what separates the best from all the rest. In the end, we identified four primary “moves” all HPOs make… They Bet on Leadership, Act as One, Win the Heart and Excel at Execution. But, this was not enough; we wanted to know HOW they do these things so well. The answers lie in their “Best Practices.” Today we explore one of those practices – HPOs Build the Bench!
I was in a planning meeting; we were thinking about the upcoming decade. The question we were wrestling with was this: “What do we want to be true in our organization ten years from now that is not true today?” It was the perfect question to force us to take a hard look at our current reality and stretch us at the same time.
Teams outperform individuals in virtually any setting. This phenomena is driven by the fact we are certainly smarter together than we are independently. I’m sure these statements don’t surprise you if you have ever been part of a high performance team. What may surprise you is this: I’ve never seen a high performance team who did not have great meetings. Today’s Challenge: Should all our team meetings follow the same structure?
Each year about this time, I begin to focus intently on the upcoming year. I reflect on the past twelve months and strategize about how to make the next year more impactful. My conclusion, time and time again – there is no magic pill – only hard work will suffice. However, if I had a magic wand, I would grant myself the power to do the following…
Who should lead your team? The answer may not be as clear as you think. But it may be one of the most important decisions you’ll make if you are trying to build a high performance team.
This is the last post in my series on the five levers of change. Please don’t mistake the placement of this fifth lever with its value. If we use the first four levers of change: Communications, Measurement, Resource Allocation and Reward and Recognition, and fail to embrace the practices of Performance Management, our change efforts are still in jeopardy .