Understanding what drives (and blocks) performance​

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Executives at successful companies have had their exploits be the subject of thousands of books and millions of buzzwords: getting the right people on the bus, disrupting markets, hiring heroes, rewriting your story, changing at the speed of trust ... you get the idea.

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None of these are necessarily wrong; they're just not complete or helpful for most companies.

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Based on my work with Energage and employee survey data from 80,000 companies covering more

than a decade, performance data from those companies, and hands-on experiences, I can say that executives of successful companies focus intently on removing barriers to excellent performance.

 

Instead of some complicated equation or convoluted plan,
they see performance in these terms: 

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Execution is driven by People ...

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Who are driven by emotions ...

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That are the result of how they

experience work.

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Even simpler:

Culture drives Engagement drives Execution.

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This is the Culture-Performance Connection and the nature of that connection is different for each industry and each company. 

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What they have in common is that each transition is a space where barriers to excellent performance can form.

Most of those barriers fit into one of three buckets:

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Process

• Are things done as efficiently and simply as is reasonable Are processes complicated or complex?

• Are they outside-in or inside-out?

 

People

• Are the right people in the right jobs?

• Are there too many people involved?

• Too few?

 

Knowledge

• Do people have the right knowledge to do their job correctly?

• Do they have access to and training for technologies?

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