New High Performance Survey Says...

In June, my organization teamed up with ADL Associates to conduct research on a new High Performance model.  The new model leverages concepts discovered during Six Sigma’s evolution and 30+ years of corporate experience.  The model has four major components – strategy; organizational culture processes; individual accountability; and employee engagement.

A diverse group of more than 30 organizations, based in the U.S. and Northern Ireland, participated.  In total these companies represented more than 310,000 employees.  Participants included: Amazon; AutoZone; Bombardier Aerospace – Northern Ireland; Caterpillar; Conway Freight; Menlo Logistics; PetSmart; and Public Storage.

Here are some key highlights:

• More than half of the participating organizations rated their Strategy, Organizational Cultural Processes (OCP), and Accountability average or below.
• Cultural processes that “Inform” were viewed most effective.  Those that “Teach” average and those that “Reinforce” least effective.
• Only 70% of the organizations viewed Accountability favorable.
• 88% of organizations who reported Financial Performance below expectations had flat or declining engagement
• When Engagement was viewed as a “Nice to do”, 66% of the time those organizations met or exceeded Financial Performance.  That percentage increased to 77% when Engagement was considered a “Need to do”.

So here are three sets of questions to see how your organization compares against our latest research:

• Overall our employees believe our strategy has:
  - The necessary human capital capacity allocated to it?
  - Has strong conviction by ALL to act on it?
• Organizations have a number of key “cultural processes” (OCP) that INFORM, TEACH, and REINFORCE the behaviors needed for strategy execution excellence.  How would you rank each cultural process per grouping, from most to least effective, in your organization?
  - INFORM (Communication; Policies & Procedures; Processes; and Measurement)
  - TEACH (Learning & Development; Leadership; Decision-making; and Onboarding/Orientation)
  - REINFORCE (Performance Mgt.; Recognition; Reward; and Selection)
• Are mistakes, missed targets, and errors perceived as “fatal” to individual performance and career opportunities?

I’ll share our research findings on these questions in my next blog.  Until then, remember becoming and sustaining high performance requires a strong strategy everyone champions and a culture that consistently reinforces specific behaviors.