Increase the Likelihood of Leading Your Organization to Breakthrough Performance

 Every leader, every executive every manager and individual performer wants to be able to deliver results that are consistent with their accountabilities. Everyone wants to produce beyond what is expected of him or her. Nobody, in my experience at least, wants to settle for missed milestones and failed efforts.

So as to increase likelihood of leading your organization to produce breakthrough performance establish, or re-affirm, a shared set of disciplines and practices. Here are some recommendations:

1)     Have everyone declare an unequivocal commitment to do everything they know to do [#4], and some, [#3] to deliver the results you are counting on them to deliver - without qualification. Which means no qualifiers like: subject to, if all goes well, depending on, I'll do my best, ... Qualifiers implicitly externalize the source of results to a cause(s), which cannot be controlled or responded to. Outstanding performers relate to themselves as the source of their results – that is my interpretation of Being responsible, Being accountable vs. Being a victim of circumstances.

2)     Every week have everyone declare their gaps, letting colleagues know explicitly the gap between their current run rate and the specific measurable result - be it stretch goal or KPI or... for at least the top five results for which they are accountable 

3)     Establish a methodology and set of practices to explore new possibilities: Create a safe condition for everyone [for whom this is appropriate] to acknowledge that simply exploiting existing know-how, experience, past-based ways of doing things, will be insufficient to meet their accountabilities. Assure people this is a necessary first step to be able to produce breakthroughs, and is NOT evidence of something wrong or lacking in their skills or abilities which they need to hide, but a natural consequence of going for stretch goals. That means there needs to be an aligned on methodology to, Explore, Invent, Generate, Discover how to close the gap between what is known and what is a mystery - for now at least. For example:

i)   Surface our hunches about what might, possible, maybe, could, ... be a way to close the gap

ii)  Develop heuristics - prompts to help thinking so hunches can be expressed in language that will allow ideas to be refined and honed. For example an ideation process, or a breakdown to breakthrough process, or after action reviews, or...

iii)   Create some algorithms so as to produce specific desired result, examples:

(1)  Possibilities - in the context of the problem to solve with no selecting for feasibility, capability to realize, ...

(2)  Refine possibilities to opportunities – we could do it, we have the resources or can get them in time, we have the capabilities or can get them in time, ...

(3)  From opportunities commit to action – someone promises to do X by Y time, so as to produce Z result

(4)  Evaluate the outcome: a) failed to produce result; b) produce partial but insufficient result; c) produced the desired result

(5)  In the event the outcome is a) or b) 

(6)  Repeat from 3.1. Ideally this is a short time cycle iterative process - weekly for example till desired results are produced.

4)    Up the anti on Exploiting current know how:

i)     Rigorously hone and refine every process, practice and discipline inside current  knowledge

ii)    Be specific about what results needs to be produced, by whom, by when

iii)   Evaluate outcomes - not as reports on the past, but calls for new action for the future

iv)   Hold people to account vs. blame, make wrong and recrimination - which means:

v)    Acknowledge what's so - succeeded or failed

vi)   Make new promises sufficient to close the gap and be back on interim milestones

vii) Extract learnings from successes and failures

viii)    Eliminate waste - that is, any activity that does not produce a specific, measurable, desired result. If the 80/20 rules applies, a 10% reduction in wasted effort converted to productive effort = 40% productivity improvement. Which makes producing breakthroughs more accessible and less daunting

ix)   Lower everyone's tolerance for putting up with and settling for reason and excuses as a substitute for desired results

x)     Do after action reviews after meetings, a days work, a client meeting... build on what works, eliminate what doesn't work, and add what is discovered to be missing

xi)   Identify problems to solve before they become breakdowns that cause distracting resource consuming fire-drills - by staying focused on what outcomes is needed by when vs. focused on activity or process. Put every problem/puzzle in one of two categories:

(1)  Can be solved with existing knowledge - then go solve it

(2)  Can't be solved with existing knowledge follow steps in #4