How to accelerate performance and achieve greater success in your work and personal life
You are about to discover what it really takes to achieve higher levels of performance in work and life. Whether your goal is to improve business results, advance your career, lose weight, run a marathon, build a strong marriage and family…whatever your goals or desires, the keys to success are about to be revealed.
First though is this cold-hard reality about success – be it in business, sport or any other performance endeavor for that matter:
Human behavior is the core driver of performance.
Put another way, human behavior has a huge impact on performance and subsequent results.
Now having said that, it is important to understand that there are many factors that determine how well an individual or team performs. Put simply, high performance/behavior is not just about having the right skills or being mentally tough. To illustrate, take a look at my High Performance Factors visual:
As you can see, factors impacting on team and personal performance are many and varied and include such things as organizational structure, quality of strategy and tactics, and uncontrollables such as macro-environmental conditions.
Then of course, at the centre of all performance endeavors is the skill-set – or the attributes, talents and key traits that make up an individual and team.
Some performance and HR experts believe that all you need to do to improve individual or team performance is put people on a training course or give them a pep talk. Oftentimes though this approach is too short-sighted. As an example, there's often no point sending someone on a training course to upskill, when that person's values system is at odds with the organizational culture.
The secret?
You need to take a strategic approach to high performance and look at all the factors that determine performance results, such as those outlined above. Don't cherry pick a short-term "solution" in the hope that it will solve the problem. Be strategic.
One such approach that strategically improves performance in teams and individuals is The Champion's Formula.
The key to building high performance people
The Champion's Formula is built upon my view that getting people to perform to their best requires a strategic approach to people development and performance. In other words, it's not just about throwing in an advert for a new employee and hoping for the best, or sending your people on a leadership course.
I developed The Champion's Formula to help you address both the strategic and tactical/operational elements and actions that develop and build a high performance organization – not just for today or tomorrow, but long term.
Think of the Champion's Formula as a blueprint for developing high performers. The steps outlined in this blueprint represent the complete approach to managing the most important resource you have – your people.
The steps in The Champion's Formula are:
- Think strategically and spark an initial idea and core purpose. It all starts with a purposeful idea.
- Form your leadership team.
- Conduct your SWOT analysis.
- Clarify your core values and desired culture/team brand.
- Formulate your strategy, tactics and strategic plan.
- Create the right organizational and communications structure, together with the necessary support systems and processes.
- Identify and recruit talent you need to achieve your strategic objectives. Who do we need? What will be their roles, tasks, accountabilities and rewards? Recruit for values match and skills.
- Build your team's skill base using effective "Game Sense" training, coaching and mentoring. Adapted from high performance sport, Game Sense is one of the most powerful performance improvement concepts you will ever learn.
- Execute with precision. Build a high performance environment through Example-driven Leadership. Ensure that behavior – particularly at the leadership level – matches proclaimed values. In other words, "being the sermon", and not "giving a sermon."
- Manage strategy, tactics and execution. Review often and revise as necessary.
It doesn't matter what type of organization you run – be it a corporation, small business, sports team, non-profit – these steps must be followed if you want to build and maintain high performance. Here is a visual of The Champion's Formula.
Strategic HRD and High Performance services
To help you implement the steps of The Champion's Formula, we provide the following services:
- Auditing organizational culture and climate, and the alignment of values, strategy and behavior.
- Troubleshooting human resource and human performance/behavior issues. Tools used include behavioral interviewing and 360 degree feedback.
- Assistance with strategic and tactical planning
- Advising on organizational structure and architecture.
- Designing skill recruitment processes
- Designing performance management systems
- Business restructuring and change management
- High performance coaching for CEOs/owners, managers and team members
These services use The High Performance Factors and The Champion's Formula steps as an over-arching framework to improve human performance and behavior in your business.
On an operational level we also offer a recruitment service to help you identify and recruit high performers for your business. It’s a fee-based (i.e.: no 15-20% commissions like some recruitment firms charge) service for the recruitment of staff.
With this service we use focused job profiles, competency/skill matching assessments and psychometric testing as part of the process. However, by far the most important tool we use is behavioral interviewing. This is a powerful interview process that uncovers the depth of one's expertise, experience and most importantly, the level of high performance skills they possess.
Behavioral interview techniques can uncover one's true abilities in such areas as personal leadership, discipline, collaboration and teamwork, communication, decision-making and work ethic.
Remember this. Human behavior – or the execution of one's values and skills – is the key driver of both business success and failure. Not machines, or money or technology. Not some elaborate strategic plan or system. Not the products or the target market. You cannot and will not succeed in any venture without finely tuned human behavior. And the best way to get the behavior you want is to follow the steps of The Champion's Formula:
Get these steps right and some remarkable things will happen in your business. Indeed, you will find that:
- People will be happier.
- Staff turnover – and all of the costs associated with that – will reduce.
- Commitment levels will increase.
- Overall performance will be higher
If you require consulting and coaching assistance to help you implement the steps of The Champion's Formula in your business, please call me on 09 534 9314.
