Five Steps to High Performance

The year is half over.

Are you where you expected to be?

Or is your finely tuned machine starting to cough and sputter and drag?

A C-suite executive of a successful company told me recently he was thinking about his company’s performance and it felt to him like a lot of energy was being expended but the results were not commensurate with the effort. “It’s like the cylinders in a vehicle are pumping at 110 percent,” he said, “but the timing belt is out of synch so we’re not moving as fast or as effectively as we could be moving.”

If your results are starting to dip, give your organization a five-point tune-up to get you and your team back to your peak performance.

1. Get the right people in the room. Great books deserve more than one reading and last summer I returned to Jim Collins’ Good to Great. These two sentences stood out: “The executives who ignited the transformations from good to great did not first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there. No, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it.”

Ask:

• Who’s a good cultural fit but is in the wrong position?
• Who needs to go?
• Who are we missing?

2. Get answers to questions that matter to employees. Every employee wants truthful answers to these six questions. Your job as a leader isn’t to motivate people because motivation comes from within. A leader’s job is to inspire people, and what inspires them is clarity and purpose around these six questions:

Ask:

• Why are we here? (What are we trying to accomplish together? Hint: Making money is a by-product of our mission, not the object of it.)
• Where are we going? (Is our vision bold enough to excite everyone? Is it big enough to include everyone? Hint: A number isn’t a vision.)
• What is expected of me? (The difference between responsibility and accountability is that responsibility is the promise and accountability is whether the promise is fulfilled. Do we have a culture of excuses or a culture of performance?)
• How am I doing? (People want to know the score. How is what they’re doing contributing to the achievement of the vision?)
• What’s in it for me? (It’s certainly money but it’s more than the moolah. It’s the opportunity to learn, to have a voice in the future of the company, to play a role in  doing something bigger than myself, to work at a place where I have friends and I’m proud of what I’m doing.)
• Where can I go for help? (The answer to this question describes your culture.)

3. Get serious. If you believe as I do that most people want to do a good job, it’s up to you as a leader to get serious about learning what’s hindering them. Asking one simple question will get the tough stuff out on the table so that it can be addressed. It’s an exercise I’ve used for years called “Deal the Cards” that gets all of the problems out in the open. You cannot get better if you don’t fix what’s not working. And you can’t fix what’s not working if your people don’t tell you.

Ask: 

• Where are we not doing the best that we can do?

If you’re interested in the details of this exercise, email me at greg.bustin@bustin.com. 

4. Get a plan. I’ve led more than 250 planning sessions and only about two out of every ten planning sessions is actually about strategy. Alignment—not strategy—is the primary deliverable. Planning isn’t about budget-building. Planning is about trust-building. If you don’t have trust, you don’t have alignment. Your team must be aligned around four fundamental questions or the rest of the organization will soon sense the plan doesn’t matter and everyone can do whatever they want, whenever they want. Planning equals change. So if you don’t plan to change, don’t bother to plan. If you’re doing lots of work and have little to show for it, a plan can help you rev up your performance.

Ask:

• Where are we? (This is where the “Deal the Cards” exercise really helps.)
• Where do we want to go? (The vision.)
• How will we get there? (The plan.)
• What do we get if we achieve our objectives, and what happens if we don’t? (The accountability component.) 

5. Get going. Lack of follow through wastes time, money and effort. It’s like your vehicle is ready to go but you’re idling. You’re depleting resources. And going nowhere. Failure to implement your plan after securing staff input is a cost to morale. Nothing saps a team’s energy faster than planning for an exciting future that will never be realized. So get going.
Ask:

• What is one thing our plan can address that provides the quickest or easiest fix?
• What’s one thing that will take more time but yield significant impact?

Wondering what might be hindering you and your team’s performance? Download for free Bustin & Co.’s Top 10 Performance Hurdles list to ensure you are addressing the most common reasons performance suffers.

Like any vehicle that’s been on the road for a while, a timely tune-up can help. Check your sensors (aka your KPIs), your wiring (aka your structure and delegation systems) and your fuel injection (communication messaging and cadence).

What steps can you take today to get your machine operating at peak performance?