If performance is lack-luster in your organization, you can do a quick culture scan that'll give you a snapshot of where you and your leadership team need to focus.
Paring down organizational complexity to its simplest terms (note: simple does not imply easy!), in essence there are 4 major buckets or quadrants of "work" senior managers are responsible for to create a high-performance culture:
Planning: Creating a compelling vision for the organization and a strategic direction that includes values (not just the ones you embrace, but telling people what's not accepted in the culture and why); mission; the firm's client/customer and market focus; overarching goals and objectives.
Persuading: Communicating the strategic direction within the organization to develop followership and commitment to the areas in "Planning". Developing followership ensures every person at every level knows how their role contributes to the company, understands how performance is measured, and receives consistent feedback and coaching from bosses, peers, and other key players on how they're doing and what they need to do better.
Achieving: Operationalizing Planning and Persuading into the day-to-day work of every division, department, and employee that delivers on what you promise to clients/customers, shareholders and stakeholders. Streamlined processes, procedures, and coordinating mechanisms are in place so work flows smoothly and efficiently. People are given the tools they need to do their jobs well. Goals are met and results achieved.
Enforcing: Following through on Planning, Persuading and Achieving. Performance is managed at all levels. Results are measured, learned from, and adjustments are fed back into the other three quadrants on an on-going basis. Conversations about performance are embedded into the culture. Consequences and rewards directly link all 4 quadrants.
Scan your organization against the 4 quadrants. Regardless of size, sector or industry, organizational cultures develop a preference and aptitude for one or two of the four leadership competencies.
An executive team can improve performance almost immediately by raising its awareness to recognize which quadrant(s) it excels in and which quadrants are weak.
Next, develop the skills or shake up the leadership team so you collectively lead the firm better through excellence in all 4 quadrants.
2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates
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