Cultivating High Performance

1. How do you get every employee to willingly and enthusiastically give his maximum effort -- and do it in a way that best capitalizes on his unique capabilities?
2. How do you align all those efforts toward achieving the goals of the company?

Now I am neither egotistical nor naïve enough to think that I have all the answers to these questions. But I am now convinced that it is possible to regain and sustain the magic that seems to come much more easily in an entrepreneurial environment. After much thought, I can confidently state that I believe there is a set of actions that will get any company very close to the ideal. However, the only person who can pull this off is the leader of the business -- whether that's the CEO, president, division president or whomever -- it is the person with overall accountability for the business.

But what does the CEO need to do to achieve this result?

Cultivating high performance is not about doing that one magical thing -- rather it is about putting all the pieces together in a way that allows you to most closely replicate the environment found in entrepreneurial organizations. My model for cultivating high performance in larger, more complex companies has three principal elements: 1) creating an environment that draws out the best in people, 2) creating a clear and compelling roadmap that becomes the framework against which people's energies (and other resources) are applied, and 3) ensuring consistent execution against the roadmap.

If you think about the dynamics of an entrepreneurial organization, it's much easier to achieve the three elements noted above. First, the employees who sign on with a new company are always highly motivated and enthusiastically work to do whatever it takes. Second, the group is of such a manageable size and the goals so uncomplicated that everyone easily knows and understands what needs to be done. And third, having that shared vision and working in close proximity helps keep everyone on track. It's a natural environment for high performance.

But doing it in a larger organization is another matter.

Creating the ideal environment takes a CEO who is willing to lead by example -- one who follows a set of principles while instilling them throughout the rest of the organization -- top to bottom. Providing the framework for applying everyone's best efforts requires the CEO to lead his or her management team in the "thinking" part of managing a business -- these are the activities that produce the roadmap for the business. Then, with the roadmap explicitly defined, the CEO must focus on the "doing" part of managing the business -- shaping and motivating the team, defining the actions called for by the roadmap, ensuring that they are carried out and communicating all of this with the passion found in an entrepreneurial environment.

Cultivating high performance is not about some new magic bullet -- rather it is the discipline to put all the pieces together in a consistent, coherent manner. As companies grow everything gets more complex. And it is the subtlety of ensuring that all the pieces are in place that gets lost in the heat of battle -- that is what stops them from being fun places to work or causes them to lose their innovative edge.

In a series of articles in the coming months, I will explore each of these three elements in more detail. It is my hope that this series will help you identify some number of opportunities, both small and large, that will give your company that extra push toward creating a high performance environment. The good news is that the path is not complex -- you don't need an advanced degree to get there. What you do need is an open mind, thoughtful reflection, and a personal commitment to see it through.