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At The Brew, we have been helping organizations to achieve higher growth & higher performance (our definition of high growth & high performance organizations – those with sustained double-digit growth over a two year period), and here is the most critical realization that we have come to understand:
Everyone is doing the same types of things. It’s not that the under-performing aren’t doing it well, it’s just the higher-performing companies are doing it much more effectively. They are doing it much more consistently across all the winning strategies.
The Cost of Average Performance
Most organizations haven’t focused building processes, practices, systems & culture encouraging a capability based, performance driven, engaged workforce that contributes to business growth and sustained profit. Result is these teams (and the organization) are not as performant as they could be.
The statistics show the impact of that on team performance.
Employees who cited lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures
Employees who believe lack of alignment within a team impacts the outcome of a task or project
Employees who cited they were very stressed at work felt less productive and disengaged
Employees who cited poor management is the biggest thing getting in the way of productivity
Borrowing some wisdom from Tolstoy: each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, but all happy families (high-performance organizations in our case)—are alike. By understanding the common strands of organizational DNA, the intent driven organizations can put themselves in a stronger position to achieve success.
So, what’s the secret of being more effective, and how high performing organizations are driving higher effectiveness? Well, in our experience, we have found that six organizational outcomes are key to high performance. High-performing organizations have built their human capital with following attributes:
- Aligning Human Capital with Business strategy (HR Scorecards, OKR etc.) – On a side note, See how to align human capital to business strategy here for high performance
- Improving Organizational Effectiveness (consisting of context driven Org Design, Roles & Capabilities etc.) and for effective Strategy Execution, High Growth & Change Management – See the tools & content to up Organizational Effectiveness for high performance
- Transforming Key Groups in to High Performance Teams – See our philosophy & methodology to build High Performance Teams
- Driving data effectiveness for critical decisions – See how to build practices to leverage data & pivot decision making
- Deploying High Performance Human Capital Practices to Improve overall Performance, Capability & Competence – Here’s how to improve Practice Effectiveness for organizations across diverse domains
- Improving engagement to unlock growth & profitability & go the extra mile – See how to up engagement & drive high impact work
The first three outcomes (being aligned, integrated and effective) serve as the foundation for a strong business performance. The last three (being data centric, engaged and driving practice effectiveness) serve as accelerators, giving organizations a true competitive edge, provided they put in place a solid foundation.
The Verdict: The better an organization’s’s performance along these six dimensions, the higher the odds that it will be a business performance leader — that is, an organization performing in the top quintile across these 6 dimensions, will have a higher chances to outperform its industry peers on the metrics of revenue growth, profitability and total shareholder returns, over a five-year period. Only one in six companies consistently achieve top-quintile performance on all six measures.
For Organizations, sustained business success requires a high-performance organization. For most executives, the challenge in building such an organization is determining where to start. Should a company begin by setting clearer priorities? Or would it get better returns from hiring new talent, creating new incentives or changing decision-making processes? Any one of these efforts might work, but each would consume time and other scarce resources.
The good news is, you’re not alone – and we’re going to try to make sure it doesn’t stay this way!
At The Brew, we have been helping organizations to achieve higher growth and higher performance through their human capital. Be it building high performing workplaces, or high potential teams, improving organizational effectiveness, or organizational trust, engagement, embedded-ness, culture or to improve business outcomes, human capital ROI – We leverage our proven competence in getting to these outcomes, transforming organizations to higher enterprise value & maturity. We are the experts, you have access to us, and we will not stop until you get to, where you want to be.
Compared with people at low-trust organizations, people at high-trust organization report: 74% less stress, 106% more energy at work, 50% higher productivity, 13% fewer sick days, 76% more engagement, 29% more satisfaction with their lives, 40% less burnout, enjoyed their jobs 60% more, were 70% more aligned with organizational purpose, & felt a greater sense of accomplishment – 41% more
– Paul J. Zak, The Neuroscience of Trust, HBR
To conclude, the pursuit of the building high performance organization, powered & enabled by an equally high performance human capital is no longer an undefined black box. The Brew’s recipe of elements required to build high performance workplace, gives organizations a window into internal dynamics that have been only vaguely understood so far, offering an access to this knowledge & leading to sustained performance.