Defining success is the first of many steps to achieving it, followed closely by the realization that what gets measured, gets accomplished. Some companies have mastered achieving success. In today’s global, virtual environment most are having to re-discover what matters, re-distinguishing the paths to success, even re-defining what is success today. Wherever you are on that journey, join us here for a deeper inquiry. Feel free to share your successes!
3 Distinctions
#11 Breakaway Success
Click to Learn About Breakaway Success
Definition: Beating the Odds.
Breakaway Success requires leveraging ‘A’ players and their ‘A’ teams to produce results beyond the “average, acceptable” range of possibilities, including but not limited to revenues and profits.
Breakaway Success empowers employees to be their best and rewards exceptional performance. ‘A’ players want to be measured. They want to surround themselves with other ‘A’ players (whereas ‘B’ players tend to hire ‘C’ players).
In an organization committed to Breakaway Success people, performance and results are measured with an eye to continuous improvement and in a culture of excellence and transparency. Mistakes are encouraged because everyone knows that the sooner they are identified the sooner they can be corrected.
“As a company, you are what you measure, and for every measure there is a behavioral hazard, and it is not what you necessarily expect. In selecting measures, you have to look at the view from every participant, not just what the company wants to know.”
A client of Accountability Pays
“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”
Archimedes
“With poor or mediocre execution plaguing many organizations, with the competition for the acquisition and retention of talent such a critical challenge, with organizations under pressure to operate lean with managers having to do more with less, with the reality of more fickle and demanding customers to serve, and with the difficulty of managing and leading a widely diverse population of employees—managing people for high performance is harder than ever. The demand for effective performance management skills is more critical to the success of organizations than any time in our history. And the primary stumbling block? UNDERMANAGEMENT!”
Permission to Manage, Impact Achievement Group
#12 Truth Exploring and Constructive Debate
Click to Learn About Measuring the Right Things for Breakaway Success
Definition: What you measure is a significant part of truth exploring. Lagging indicators are found in accounting records, and it is astounding how much weight is put on those indicators. They are not predictive of anything.
The problem is, by the time the P&L and balance sheet have been run the damage is already done. Leading indicators are required to predict success, which are derived from making assumptions about what causes results, then testing those assumptions by measuring actions that are assumed to lead to results. If, after some time of measuring, there is a correlation between actions taken and results, congratulations. You have proven your assumption right. Keep doing what you know works.
If, after some time measuring, there is no correlation, try again. Determining the cause of results is an iterative process that may take several tries. However, if you are wrong or you don’t try, you hardly have a system for predicting your success, in which case you are as likely to not succeed as you are to succeed. If you were lucky and succeeded and you wanted to replicate your success without knowing how you achieved it, you couldn’t.
Other significant measure are what customers, team members, sales people have to say. What you do not know about your organization can and does make a difference to outcomes. Providing an opening for feedback can be as formal as routine feedback mechanisms (suggestion boxes, surveys) or as subtle as listening in conversations to not only what is being said, but the body language that accompanies the message. When these are incongruent, there is undelivered communication. The potential for contribution often lies in the subtle clues.
“In the work environment and at home, when things are not working, people struggle with which part of the problem to address first. However, the reason that fixing a problem often does not deliver the expected results, is because the underlying dynamics that perpetuated the problem are untouched.”
Introduction to The Three Laws of Performance, Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan
“Effectively reading and deciphering the organizational patterns of an enterprise is a complex art that few people have mastered.” James Fischer, Navigating the Growth Curve “In the past decade and a half, hundreds of billions of dollars of market value have migrated from old business designs to new. The highest valuations now go to those who have the most effective business design,”
Skywotzky and Morrison, Profit Patterns
“Most people think that profit is paramount in business, and it certainly is important, but cash is king. I’m talking here about the stuff you use to pay your bills every month. I don’t think anyone really understands what it takes to succeed in business until you’ve tried to operate without cash.”
Jack Stack, A Stake in the Outcome
#13 Getting to Generative, Inspired, Focused Performance
Click to Learn About Getting to Generative, Inspired, Focused Performance
“Strategic critical thinking is not about having all the answers, but about being totally immersed in the questions. The cold, hard fact is that there is seldom much credible information about the future, the terrain of strategy. If one waits to act until complete or perfect information is available, the time to act will have passed.”
Mardig Sheridan, Mardig and Company
Systems Thinking
I believe in the “Systems Thinking” approach to strategic planning, which involves, among many other things, identifying leverage points, which are places where a small change can make a significant improvement in results. The following excerpt references ways to look for leverage points and how to go about that. If you want to know more about Systems Thinking approach, a famous resource is The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization by Peter Senge. This book re-launched the concept of Systems Thinking which began in biology many, many years ago. Another author and expert on this topic is Stephen Haines, Haines Centre for Strategic Management.
Discovering and Working with Leverage Points
To get to the cause, never look where the problem is — it is almost never in the same time or space as the effect.
Leverage points are almost always found in the “balancing loop” and will generally take the form of a thermostat setting. They tend to be quite subtle in nature. They should always address the question, “What does it take to maintain balance and achieve optimum growth?”
- Identify leverage points. Ask, “What will removing the source of upset conditions and limits to growth?”
- Examine the underlying structure of the organization that you have mapped out and discover the true source of upset conditions (hint: look for the source or cause of any imbalance.)
- Most leverage points tend to be developmental in nature and are based on becoming a competency-development organization.
“Author’s Notes, The Generative Organization, From Reactive Behavior to Inspired Performance.”
William J. Schwarz
Generative, Inspired, Focused Performance — the result of executive excellence, hiring ‘A’ players, measuring the right things, assessing and then developing ‘A’ teams, employee engagement, and having the right people in the right seats on the bus, and effective planning and execution. The result of generative, inspired, focused performance is Breakaway Success and the financial rewards that come from having focused energy in the appropriate channels to produce desired results. If that describes your organization, please accept this acknowledging High Five!!
