Performance is probably one of the most misused words that we hear today.

What is it, how do we get it and what are we prepared to do to get it?

I am sure NZ Cricket would love to know the answer!!!

I have been reading a fascinating book about performance within organisations that has an innovative (some may say radical) approach to performance thinking.

To quote from the book:

“Our evidence suggests that the most powerful driver of better performance is better performance itself. That is if you want to help an organisation develop its ability to perform better you can do nothing more effective than help it to experience a tangible success on some of the dimensions it is trying to strengthen”

The common paradigm is to prepare, consult, plan, to implement and then to wait for results.

They are suggesting turning this paradigm upside down and beginning the doing immediately. And then using the implementation to learn from - rather than seeing outcomes in terms of success or failure.

It is a fascinating concept and one that I believe suits the fast changing world we live in. And not the world of the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s where much of our management thinking (and probably personal paradigms) come from.

Interestingly Larry Bossidy who was a very successful performance turn round manager wrote in his book “Execution” that a superb capability to deliver and do (execute) would always out perform good strategy – providing you learned and course corrected from your execution.

What is interesting about this concept is that often we stay with what we believe, or have learned or what we believe to be true. But often it is not relevant to the world we live in – which is generally moving much faster than our ability to adapt as individuals or organisations.

And from my viewpoint after reading this book I think they have a lot of things right in their thinking about performance.

See what you think by checking out this book which is – Rapid Results! by Robert Schaffer and Ron Ashkenas.

Enjoy and be challenged!!!