INFLUENCING BEHAVIOUR FOR PEAK PERFORMANCE: WHY AND FOR WHAT? (2) STRATEGIES FOR CREATING A HIGH PERFORMING ORGANIZATION Researchers have identified six crucial components of creating sustainable growth and a high performance organization. A Gallup study of 3,477 managers from companies, banking and finance industries, property development, tourism, automotive industry and telecommunications sectors. The Gallup studies showed that high performing organizations have cultures by setting clear expectations; defining employees’ growth; creating a trusting environment and encouraging employees’ growth and development. The six crucial elements include: 1. Implement An Effective Performance Management Process: Here it is advised that managers should use merit-based system to differentiate between high and low performers with a clear definition of standards and expectations at the individual, team departmental and organizational levels. A transparent reward system and shared goals is also essential. 2. Create Empowerment and Authority; Managers are expected to recognize and respond to changes especially in marketplace information and develop innovative ideas to meet market demands in order to stay ahead of competitors. It is also expected that they will connect with customers to create a brand experience. In addition, companies that decentralize their decision-making so employees can contribute their quota to the growth of the company. 3. Increase Leadership Capability at all levels of the Company: When employees are inspired with constant communication, the firm maintains her link with work trends, initiatives and changes pertaining to where the business is heading. The company’s mission should be communicated to all employees so as to inspire trust and respect which permeates the entire gamut of the organization, involve all employees in developing strategy, especially field experts and high potential future leaders. 4. Develop a Customer-centric Strategy: A successful organization must be centred around the customers, which is connecting company brand, people, mission and purpose. A customer-centric organization must first understand the nexus between what the employees are doing and how they are meeting the needs and expectations of customers. They should create opportunities for employees’ engagements. 5. Increase Communication and Collaboration: Integrating customer service values, missionand purpose, leadership visibility and authority and empowerment into a comprehensive performance management process. Here, the manager has to select leaders and managers with potential to be top performers based on the right balance of talents, skills, knowledge and experience. When leaders understand their roles and communicate such roles among peers with a view to collaboration pursue opportunities across departmental and division boundaries. Again, creating strong links among the employees also gives them confidence and a sense of belonging to contribute. 6. Enhancing Training & Development: Many HPO invest in employees to inculcate in them norms, values and skills that will make them perform. This is continuous growth and improvement of employees. This prevents “talent hoarding” and enhances the organization’s ability to prevent external mobility of employees. Most companies align customized training and development plans with the organizations overarching objectives and direction thereby providing a clear career pathway for productivity improvement. Peak performing organizations consistently outperform competitors and realize bottom-line impact from their human functions. Scholars have identified five components or domains of a high performing organization. 1. Strategy: Strategy means how to use organizational resources, skills and competencies to create competitive advantage. Strategy exists at three basic levels namely corporate Strategy, Business Unit Strategy and Team Strategy. a). Strategy refers to the overall strategy of an organization which determines how the corporation supports the value of business. It addresses the question of how the structure of an organization creates more value for the individual and the organization. Corporate value enables an organization to know the resources to be deployed, to create the greatest possible value skills to be used and a combination of all variables to support the strategy goals of an organization. b) Business unit strategy is concerned with how to win in the market here competitive analysis including gathering competitive intelligence, core competencies and SWOT Analysis are required. In smaller business, corporate strategy and business unit strategy overlap. For this overlap to be in Synch, it is important to have a clear definition of the business unit’s mission, vision and core values. c) Team Strategy: Teams are working groups to which specific tasks have been assigned. Each team has its own team-level strategy-which is directly related to the achievement of business and corporate strategies. Each team must have a task, team character, operational dynamics and key performance indicators. 2. Leadership: Leadership must communicate expectation and develop and promote the right people. Leadership must initiate structure and consideration and show the direction to follow. 3. Talent: Talent refers to those innate capabilities with which an individual worker is endowed. Talent is necessary for a failed business. Talent closes the gap between where the business needs to go and what it takes to manage the business during tough times. Sound talent strategy starts with a clear picture of the business outcomes and defining the talents required to achieve the outcomes. Every organization must have a clear-cut policy of choosing the right talents that will align with the corporate strategy with accomplishing rewards, recognition, and compensation to drive results. 4. Organizational Culture: This is the behaviour of humans who are part of an organization and they are attached to the values, vision, beliefs, norms and habits of the organization. Organizational culture affects the way people and groups interact with one another, with clients, and with stakeholders. Ravasi and Schultz (2006) states that organizational culture is a set of shared assumptions that guide, define and interpret corporate behaviour organizational culture through communication and symbols, or competing. In modern times, organizational culture is seen as a network of shared meanings as well as the power struggles involved by creating similar networks of competition. An effective organization must have a mechanism of creating a new culture, changing weak cultures, maintaining new culture and establishing and keeping the new culture. Corporate culture is the sum total of the values, customs and traditions that make a company unique. Corporate culture is the “Character of an Organization”. 5. Market: In organizational perspective, every employee should know the relationship between his or her job and its impact on business results. An organization has to apply marketing techniques such as competitive strategy, to analyze how the firm operates; value chain analysis, strategic group of competitors and market research within the context of SWOT analysis. It must also include brand audit, product differentiation and sustainable competitive advantage. Joshi (2005). Two ways to motivate people to peak performance is to meet “the autonomy need.” This is the need to be seen and respected as an individual, and to stand out for one’s personal performance. It is a need to be recognized for individual achievement. The second is The Dependency Need. This is the need that people have to feel a part of something bigger than them. People want to be part of a team. It is the need to feel recognized and accepted as a member in the workplace. Most peak performing organizations create environments where people have a sense of autonomy and have their dependency needs satisfied. Even the reward structures in such organizations are designed to reward not only autonomous performance but also team performance. 6.Influence & Human behavior: Behaviour refers to the range of regular consistent habits exhibited by humans and which are influenced by culture, attitudes, emotions, values, ethics, authority, rapport, hypnosis, persuasion, coercion and genetics. The behavior of humans (and other organisms or even mechanisms) falls within a range with some behaviour being common, some unusual, some acceptable, and some outside acceptable limits. The acceptability of behaviour depends upon social norms and is regulated by various means of control. The totality of human behaviour can be experienced throughout an individual’s entire lifetime. It includes the way they act based on different factors such as genetics, social norms, core faith, and attitude. Behaviour is impacted by certain traits each individual has. The traits vary from person to person and can produce different actions or behaviour from each person. Social norms also impact behaviour. Different behaviours are deemed to be either acceptable or unacceptable in different societies and cultures. Core faith can be perceived through the religion and philosophy of that individual. It shapes the way a person thinks and this in turn results in different human behaviours. Attitude can be defined as the degree to which the person has a favorable or unfavorable evaluation of the behavior in question. Ones attitude is essentially a reflexion of the behaviour portrayed in specific situations. Thus, human behavior is greatly influenced by the attitudes we use on a daily basis. An attitude is an expression of favor or disfavor toward a person, place, thing, or event. The interesting thing about an attitude and human beings is that it alters between each individual. A main factor that determines attitude is likes and dislikes. Positive attitudes are better than negative ones as negativity can bring on negative emotions that most of the time can be avoided. It is up to humans to make sure their attitudes positively reflect the behaviors they want to show. This can be done by assessing their attitudes and properly presenting them in society. Influence is the ability to alter or sway an individual’s or group’s thoughts, beliefs and actions. Influence is the software you find in leadership, negotiation, teamwork and sales. In fact it is the central competence in performance. Edward Murrow asserted that: “To be persuasive, we must be believable, to be believable, we must be credible, to be credible, we must be truthful”. Influence is self-focused and creates positive tension in the team. Influence is intentional about personal growth and development; it also identifies the obstacles that hinder growth and success. Influence is persuasive; it is neither controlling nor domineering. Influential leaders share what they learn, owns up to their weaknesses and personality flaws. An influential manager creates room for change and is productive in their given field. 7. Strategies for Influencing Others for Peak Performance 1) “Empowerment: Making others feels valued by involving them in decision-making and giving them recognition” There’s more long-term payoff in fulfilled and grateful staff members than there is in temporary and fleeting credit for someone else’s work. And managers benefit over the long term from well-developed employees who have experience contributing to decisions. The only limitation here is that you cannot “empower” people who are above you in the organization. It also does not lend itself to quick decisions, like in times of crisis. Workers feel gratified where credit given to whom it is due. 2) “Interpersonal Awareness: A manager has to identify other people’s concerns and positioning one’s ideas to address them” Most of the time concerns will not be vocalized, particularly if there’s not yet a degree of trust in the relationship. If you sell, a buyer might have concerns, but may hesitate to vocalize them because they know you have a line ready to “defuse” their concern. It takes a leap of faith for someone who has a concern to raise their hand and mention it, which is why this works better one-on-one than it does in group 3) “Relationship Building: Taking the time to get to know others and maintain friendly communications: Here, Everybody should start focusing on this strategy, because it takes a long time to learn how to recognize valuable contacts, and even longer to build high value relationships with them. The highest value contacts are very busy people, and associate with those from whom they can mutually benefit. Consequently, it’s harder to build the type of relationship that will result in support when you need it. It takes a long-term investment in time, consistent contact, and an investment in emotional energy to take an interest in others. 4) Organizational Awareness: Identifying key influencers and getting their support: Organizational awareness is key to peak performance. The reality of many organizations is that decisions are made or heavily influenced by people who are outside the organization. When stakeholders exercise enormous influence on the organization, performance is vitiated. The manager has to bring the decisions of selected key stakeholders to influence the organizational decisions. 5) Common Vision: Showing how your ideas support the organization’ adds credibility to the organization. Organizational members’ personal credibility and the organization produce an atmosphere of pride and high morale. Leaders who work from an exciting and inspiring vision can pass that excitement down through the ranks if the staff can make a connection between their function and the greater cause. But this strategy has its risks. If your organizational culture does not breed communal value, or if you do not have the rank and clout to connect with that value, you will fall absolutely flat. 6) Impact Management: Choosing the most interesting, memorable or dramatic way to present ideas: It has a similar risk to the “vision” strategy above: it has a high “hack-factor” from overuse and misuse. It tends to be presentational or event-like in nature, and while it creates a good first impression, it works best on those you don’t know very well. If your audience is very left-brained, concrete, or in any way detail-focused, you run the risk of being marginalized as all fizz and no gin. Also, and this is very important: most people think they are giving presentations of quality impact, when actually the Only maybe one out of a hundred presentations is of sufficient quality to leverage this strategy, so be very honest with yourself about your skill. There are seven characteristics of high performing Organizations. These are: Shared Purpose and Direction Motivating Goals Commitment to Individual and Team Roles Multi-Directional Communication Authority to Decide or Act Reliance on Diverse Talents Mutual Support and Trust a. Shared Purpose and Direction In a high-performing team, everyone on the team is committed to the teams purpose. They know exactly what that purpose is because the team leader keeps them focused by constantly communicating that purpose in team meetings and regular updates. The team leader helps each individual team member meet his or new own needs while serving the overall purpose of the team. b. Motivating Goals The has to do with defining clear goals and targets. In some organizations, the strategic goals and departmental objectives are determined by senior management. In that case, the team leader ensures that goals are clearly discussed. Team members should understand how their jobs support the achievement of the defined goals, and, have the opportunity to develop individual goals and action plans and how they will contribute to organizational goals. c. Commitment to Individual and Team Roles In a Total Team, team members have clearly defined expectations but they also understand how each of their roles is linked to every other role. Team leaders ensure that members are cross-trained in other responsibilities so that everyone can back each other up when needed. The team leader ensures that individual job responsibilities are fulfilled, but, at the same time, works to help the individuals develop a common language processes and approaches that allow them to function as a team. d. Multi-Directional Communication On the best teams, team members solve problems, communicate with each other, and keep the team leader updated on current challenges or emerging issues. On low-performing teams, communication is one-way (from team leader to team members) or two-way (between the team leader and individuals). Skilled leaders focus on developing multi-directional communication, avoiding the trap of communicating with individuals members of the team. e. Authority to Decide or Act Effective team leaders work toward pushing authority for the teams outcomes to the team members. Team members know how and when to get approval for decisions and, in the best of cases, are charged with making on-the-spot decisions when a customer is facing them. On low-performing teams, team members have to constantly get approval before taking action, significantly reducing their effectiveness and negatively affecting their sense of engagement on the team. f. Reliance on Diverse Talents Savvy team leaders pay attention to helping team members understand their unique strengths, talents, and weaknesses. No individual team member can be good at everything. The best team leaders assist everyone to develop an appreciation for individual style differences, natural gifts, and personal experience. Teams are encouraged to use the language of acceptance and appreciation, rather than criticism and judgment. Team leaders consciously hire team members who bring complementary skill sets, unique experience, and diverse perspectives. g. Mutual Support and Trust The team leader cant force a team to be supportive and trusting--its a natural result of shared responsibility, shared success, and mutual respect. The high-performing team achieves mutual support and trust because they have a history of working together to achieve grand dreams and results. They have met challenges, overcome obstacles, and backed each other up in good times and bad. The Total Team has earned each others trust. Building a high-performing team is not an easy task. 8. Leadership influences Peak performance In most successful and high performing organizations, it is the leadership that drives performance. Leadership can drive peak performance when meets the following criteria: 1. Creative. (Leadership example: Steve Jobs, Apple.) In creative cultures, the primary driver is self-expression. Leaders focus on creative brilliance and celebrate individuals and teams who break the mold with new innovations. The fluid organization structure typically contains self-organizing work teams and collaborative project groups. Creative cultures foster an environment where discontinuous innovation is possible. 2. . In collaborative cultures, the primary driver is teamwork and building consensus. Leaders tend to base decision-making on building a shared view of desired results. The negative aspects of collaborative cultures can be slow decision-making and excessive time to evaluate alternatives. They value trustworthiness and teamwork above creativity and aggressiveness. Collaborative companies seek to develop deep, long-lasting relationships with their clients and often use customer satisfaction as a metric for the organization. 1. 3. Competitive. In competitive cultures, the primary driver is personal and team achievement, often defined as winning. Leaders concentrate on beating the competition and often create quarterly competitive hit lists to squash the competitive enemy of the month. They value personal knowledge and killer instincts. Competitive cultures celebrate individual achievement over and above teamwork. This culture and its leaders love management dashboards, which show competitive trends and market-share gains. 4. Controlled. In controlled cultures, the primary driver is order and alignment based on clear goals and objectives. Leaders create hierarchical reporting structures where power and authority are vested at the top. They value quarterly improvement metrics and benchmarks to determine operational excellence. The organization highly values annual and quarterly business plans and key performance measurements. Overly controlled cultures can lead to excessive bureaucracy, red tape and rules. Employees may feel un-empowered to make decisions without management review and approval. to be contd.
Posted on: Tue, 06 Jan 2015 07:12:37 +0000
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