Courageous Performance Leadership

How do you think these leaders perceive this extraordinary commitment to implementing their vision? You would think that a guarantee would be perceived as a good thing. Surprisingly, it is often seen as a bad idea.

Why would a guarantee of performance improvement be seen as a negative? Most peoples' first response is that such a guarantee simply isn't credible. As one Vice President of Operations for a large carpet retailer told us: "Do you mean to tell me that you can do in a matter of a few months what I haven't been able to do in five years?" A guarantee should eliminate such skepticism, since a guarantee means that they have literally nothing to lose by trying the approach. So why the resistance?

Executive Accountability

When we probe more deeply about the resistance, we discover that the phrasing of the guarantee is critically important. Notice that we guaranteed their vision for performance improvement would be implemented in their organization. Whose vision? Theirs!

This puts a lot of pressure on the leaders. In order to take advantage of the guarantee they have to:

• Have a vision

• Articulate the vision in a reasonable clear and articulate way

• Believe in their vision

While a few leaders either lack a vision of performance improvement entirely or feel that their vision is not well articulated, we have found this to be a relatively small group. Most leaders, together with their teams, have developed a vision of the desired performance improvements and have at least some strategy for achieving the vision. This means that the resistance can only come from one cause -- leaders do not actually believe in their own vision. By guaranteeing that their vision for high performance in their organization will be implemented, they become accountable for the quality of their vision, and this makes many leaders very uncomfortable.

The implications of minimal commitment to their vision are significant. If the leaders don't believe in their vision of performance improvement, it is unlikely that anyone else will believe and work hard to improve. How can an organization actually improve performance if the leaders don't have the courage to commit to their own vision?

Requirement #1 - Courage of Conviction

The first thing that is needed for true, consistent, systematic performance improvement is what we have come to call the "courage of their convictions." In simple terms, leaders must believe in what they are doing enough to overcome the natural human and organizational resistance to change.

Courage of conviction has several component parts:

• Belief in the need to improve performance (we have found that a surprisingly large number of leaders and leadership teams are actually content with their current performance, even if they state publicly a need to constantly improve)

• Belief in the areas of greatest opportunity for improvement (i.e. they believe in their vision)

In short, they must believe that they have to get better and that their vision is a good way to do it.

Requirement #2 - Courage To Innovate

As noted earlier, the initial response to the guarantee is typically skepticism. Why?

Most executives have tried many different approaches to performance improvement, typically with mixed results at best. Traditional approaches to performance improvement such as slide-driven training classes, outside consultants, executive roadshows, knowledge management systems and a host of other alternatives have promised great results but not proven consistently effective. Their skepticism of any new approach is understandably grounded in harsh experience.

As a result, executives develop a perspective that their level of commitment doesn't matter much because, whatever they feel, the improvement methodologies available to them likely won't work. This leads to a "why bother?" mentality since performance isn't likely to improve anyway.

But now we come along with a "guarantee." How is that possible? Our answer is that the science of organizational performance improvement has progressed so much in the last few years that much of what was previously ad hoc and ineffective is now systematic and predictable. More specifically, when the research in positive deviance, fair process, neuroscience and mass customization are combined into a specific methodology, it is possible to get 98% of all personnel to completely embrace and adhere to the leader's performance improvement vision. That's right...when an organization follows this scientific approach, 98% of personnel will significantly improve performance. This result has been achieved often enough and in sufficiently diverse industries that the results can be guaranteed.

So what courage is needed when the results are guaranteed? In addition to belief in the vision, leadership has to have the courage to move from the outdated conventional wisdoms of performance improvement to these new, scientifically based approaches. It takes courage to be an early adopter of a new approach, even if the approach is very well proven. On the other hand, we can paraphrase a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein: "Insanity is continuing to do what you have always done and expecting a different result." To truly improve performance, an organization's leadership must have the courage to try something new.

Requirement #3 - Courage of Resource Allocation

What does it mean to try something new? In the most basic sense, it means that resources currently allocated to well-understood and accepted functions must be re-allocated to something new. Further, this "something new" has great potential for creating high returns, but can create considerable uncertainly as well. As one of our clients expressed it: "We need to withdraw from current, lower value work, and invest in developing new capabilities that have great potential but are unproven. This is a scary path."

In particular, in order to implement the scientific approaches to performance improvement discussed above, organizations often have to re-allocate resources from handling the intense pressures of daily operations, which are often very transactional but have an immediate impact on financial performance, to longer-range transformational activities that are much less tangible and only indirectly connected to the immediate bottom-line. This is a very challenging decision and requires, of course, courage of conviction that the future performance will justify the investment.

Organizations naturally resist this re-allocation of resources. In order to improve performance, executive teams must have the courage to ensure that the re-allocation occurs, even when there is considerable short-term pressure to continue "business-as-usual."

Requirement #4 - Courage to Follow-up

We have often heard people in organizations describe performance improvement efforts as the "fad of the week" and advise others that if they "ignore it long enough, it will go away." Similarly, leaders tend to quickly shift their attention away from the unexciting work of sustained implementation of an initiative toward new, more exciting strategies and programs.

In order to be successful at using these new scientific performance improvement methodologies, the leadership team must stay focused on the initiative for an extended period of time. As one of our colleagues says: "There is no Twitter version of significant performance improvement." What this means in particular is:

• Follow-up, follow-up and then follow-up some more. Organizations need to know that leadership really is committed to the vision. They demonstrate their commitment by allocating their own attention to ensuring that the program is followed.

• Ignore any negativity. Have the courage to stay upbeat and positive and insist that people keep working on the program, particularly when the organization resists change.

• Provide significant consequences both for people who really embrace the new initiative and for those who resist, including possible termination for severe resistors.

• Stay with a core focus area, especially when there are calls to expand the program.

In essence, executives need to have the courage to stick with their vision even when there are many forces that could derail it.