Like high-achieving individuals, some organizations seem to have the Midas touch. Virtually every initiative they touch earns them gold and even those that fail never seem to cost them much of anything at all.
These high-performing organizations seem to have a gut feel for their markets so strong that at times they manage to look positively psychic. The staff members all seem to perform at a peak, day in and day out, never want to leave the company and always have the customers in front of mind. The organizations themselves, their strong, compelling vision etched firmly on the brain of every employee, seem to learn their markets faster and more thoroughly than any competitor ever could and turn effortlessly on a dime as market pressures dictate. And however ambitious the targets they set, they never seem to miss.
High-performing organizations are relentless about constantly measuring business performance, preferably using a selective scorecard
Unfortunately, building such a beast takes time, energy and patience - and it isn't nearly as easy as it looks.
"Most leaders really do struggle with having some type of recipe for building a high-performance team," says Link-up Consulting CEO Paul Burgess. "These people are normally in positions of senior leadership because they've demonstrated an ability to get great results strategically and execution-wise; it doesn't always mean they have got the ability to build high-performance teams."
Burgess says being in a leadership position is no guarantee that you have a proven, reliable methodology or a track record for building high-performance teams because these things do not necessarily go hand in hand. Plenty of those in such positions rely on gut feel or just try to do the right thing by people. Relying on such wishful thinking can prove a big mistake.
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