Creating a Performance Culture: What Not To Do

This blog post is in response to August 2015 ASQ Influential Voices topic "Creating a Performance Culture: What Not To Do" written by James Lawther.

From the U. S. Baldrige perspective, enterprise-wide performance excellence is key to sustainable growth and prosperity. This sounds nice on paper, however to achieve performance excellence it calls for enlightened leadership. When leaders surround themselves with competent and positive attitude associates, a journey of sustainable transformation begins. 

According Prof. Emeritus John P. Kotter from Harvard Business School (Change Management Guru), there is a Eight-Stage Process of Transformation Journey ("Leading Change" 2nd Edition, Harvard Business Review Press, Boston, MA, 2012). 

The Eight Stages of Transformation are:   

1. Establishing a Sense of Urgency
2. Creating the Guiding Coalition
3. Developing a Vision and Strategy
4. Communicating the Change Vision
5. Empowering Employees for Broad-Based Action
6. Generating Short-Term Wins
7. Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change
8. Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture 

In the eighth stage, he suggests that a new culture will emerge which needs to be weaved into new corporate style encompassing leadership development and succession planning.

Here are some Don'ts for building a Performance Culture for a Sustainable Transformation:

1. Do not launch a change initiative without establishing a sense of urgency which leads to too much complacency.
2. Do not to proceed until you have a powerful guiding coalition (team) consisting of leaders at all levels.
3. Do not create complicated or blurry Vision of Change to be useful. Need a clear and compelling statement to be effective.
4. Do not under-communicate the change vision. Need credible communication, and a lot of it to engage hearts and minds of employees.
5. Do not permit obstacles to block the new change vision. Need to change organizational structure and/or performance-appraisal systems for employees to take actions.
6. Do not hope for short-term wins (passive), but must create compelling evidence (active) within six to eight months that the journey is producing expected results.
7. Do not declare victory too soon. For the entire company it may take three to ten years to sink changes deeply into the culture.
8. Do not neglect to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture. Reinforce specific behaviors and attitudes that helped improve performance. May require reshaping promotion criteria and succession planning.

I look forward to your views to build a performance culture.