Are you clear on what contributes to your company’s high performance? Do you need to clarify exactly what are the drivers of performance in your business?
One of the most powerful questions you can ask as a leader is “What is the best decision I can make to achieve intended results?” You need to be clear on what will work for your enterprise not simply applying lessons from other companies.
What makes your company, law or accountancy firm successful?
Do you really know what contributes to your company’s high performance — or are you making assumptions based on faulty logic?
It turns out that most of the data regarding why one company succeeds and another fails is rife with errors in thinking and researcher bias.
For all of the business bestsellers that proclaim to share the secret formula of successful companies and heroic CEOs, the drivers of performance in business are as elusive as ever — especially at a time when global competition and technology are evolving at unprecedented rates.
But this doesn’t stop consultants and business school professors from writing “authoritative” books that claim to have the formula for driving company success. If you haven’t already guessed, high performance cannot be attained by simply applying the best practices of General Electric, Toyota, Starbucks or Google to your own enterprise. Nor can you hire rock-star CEOs to guarantee high performance in your organization.
I’m sorry to report it’s not that easy, but I have a hunch you already know that. What you may not be aware of are the common biases and flawed thinking that affect the way individuals make decisions under uncertainty. When it comes to evaluating company performance, it’s easy to fall into a variety of universal traps.
For the last 20 years, managers have bought into popular business books such as In Search of Excellence, Built to Last and Good to Great.
Writing in The Halo Effect…and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers (Free Press, 2007), Phil Rosenzweig claims many books that focus on company success are based on flimsy research and delusional thinking:
“For all their claims of scientific research, for all their lengthy descriptions of apparently solid and careful research, they operate mainly at the level of storytelling. They offer tales of inspiration that we find comforting and satisfying, but they’re based on shaky thinking.”
We must peel away the layers of jumbled thinking to thoroughly investigate the elements that lead to high performance. Recognizing these lapses in logic is the only way to pull back the curtains to see what’s really going on.
With full awareness, we can identify the elements that truly drive company performance, provided we recognize the fundamental uncertainties at the heart of all businesses. Delusions can be replaced with more discerning ways to understand performance based on a respect for probabilities.
Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a high performance leader. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and self - management, and who inspires people to become happily engaged with the strategy and vision of a high performance company or law firm.
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