Creating a high performance culture

Here is a topic that many leaders would love to have the recipe for and achieve the greatest performance for their business. The reality is complex and many factors contribute to the level of people’s performance in a business.

In simple terms, we can define performance as the best one can do in a competitive environment. This means performance in relation to others and or in relation to some key measures of performance criteria. In organisations, performance is usually measured against the desired results and KPIs set out by the leadership.

There are 3 levels of performance in businesses: the individual level, the team level, the whole organisation level (or the whole division, or business unit).
When thinking of creating a highly performing organisation, one must think about those three levels and how they can influence each of them to create the conditions of high performance. A vast task.

The best way to look at this is to first consider what is actually affecting performance under each level.

Under the individual level, performance can be affected by personal reasons and work related reasons. The best an Organisation can do at an individual level is to make sure the individual is supported throughout her or his career within the company. There has to be a sense of progress and support throughout for each individual. Key values of respect, self esteem building, promotion possibilities, fair compensation, pleasant working environment, trust and more must be lived throughout the leadership. Any deviance from those should be addressed immediately. One key question for a leader when identifying a potential issue is to ask themselves: ‘is it an isolated individual incident or is this a pattern?’ It is clear that the leadership here sets the tone for a culture of high performance.

On a team level, performance takes a new dimension that requires subtle skills from the leadership to put people with different skills and personalities together to achieve a common goal. This is not an easy task especially when a leader has inherited a dysfunctional team following a promotion or has been recruited from outside of the organisation. A leader must be a good personality traits and skills reader to compose an effective team.

On the organisation level, performance will be affected by the lack of direction, the lack of clear goals, the lack of purpose of why we do what we do, by the quality of the leadership itself, and for business owners directly by the way they handle their leadership.

Creating a highly performing culture within a business takes a lot of thoughts and a careful approach. Addressing the question of what affects the performance of the organisation on those 3 levels is a good place to start.

Herve Rolland.
Business Coach

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