Six elements of a High Performing Organization

Ken Blanchard has another book out on leadership. This one's called "Leading at a Higher Level."

Key points include:

Leaders can be successful in the short term if they primarily focus on goal accomplishment. But...
Leaders focusing on long-term results and human satisfaction can get longer-term success.
High-performing organizations (HPOs) are enterprises that over time continue to produce outstanding results with the highest level of human satisfaction and commitment to success.
A group of researchers identified six scorable elements of HPOs:
- Shared information. That is, information needed to make informed decisions is readily available to people and is openly communicated.
- Compelling vision. When everyone supports an organization's vision -- assuming for a moment a well thought-out and clearly articulated vision exists -- it creates a deliberate, highly focused culture that drives desired business goals.
- Ongoing learning. Everyone is always striving to get better, both individually and as an organization.
- Relentless focus on customer results. What's unique is that in HPOs it's the way they focus on those results: from the viewpoint of the customer.
- Energizing systems and structures. Systems, processes, structures and practices in HPOs are aligned to support the vision, strategic direction and goals.
- Shared power and high involvement. When people feel valued and respected for their contributions, are allowed to make decisions that affect their lives, and have access to information to make good decisions, they can and will function as valuable contributors.
Leadership is the engine.

I'd be interested to see how some of the organizations I've come in contact with over the past, say, 5 years come out on the score. More interesting still: if there are organizations today with low market share and/or book value that score relatively high on the scale. And, while we're at it, what the relative weight-factors, if any, are assigned to each of the elements.

Hmmm... I haven't read the book yet. It's on my wish list. Well no, not yet... okay... now it is. (Gotta love that wi-fi internet-thing.)

So, since I haven't read it yet, I don't know how the scoring is actually done in the model. But, I thought it might be fun to just take a qualitative stab at it. Using a 5-point Likert scale (1 = Low; 5 = High) to do a little Q&D scoring (quick-and-dirty), here's how I'd apply it to an organization on my mind:

Shared information: 3.5
Justification: The organization does a reasonably okay job with disseminating information. The CEO sends some personal thoughtful updates about twice a month. And, in our region at least, the director does well to hold quarterly "town halls." The director is also directly involved with teaching internal leadership courses. However, we have to beat-up the score a bit for the "readily available" criteria that Blanchard gives for information needed by people to make informed decisions. For the most part, I see experienced people in key positions. So, in a sense, I'd say information is readily available for people to make informed decisions. But only insofar as subordinates have access to these key informed people. But, cut that informed person out and, well, you know...
Compelling vision: 1.5
Justification: Hmmm. I can't articulate it. And, while I do recall posters I've seen in the lobby that had one of those triangle pictures representing a triad of values, I don't recall a vision statement. Or even a mission statement for that matter. Oh yeah, I've seen it on some HR PowerPoints. But, seeing as I don't see the leadership referring to a singularly compelling vision when the town-hall meetings are held, or when discussing how quarterly objectives might otherwise align with such a vision, I gotta do the little "iffy" hand-oscillating gesture-thing on this one.
Ongoing learning: 3
Justification: I'd say it's there. I know it's desired by the leadershi for the employees. But, funding it is another matter. They're big on lunch-and-learns b/c it's least expensive and minimizes non-billable hours. Having said that, there is a procedure for education reimbursement and I believe they'll also reimburse for some continuing education/professional development programs after a somewhat tedious paperwork drill with justification. Geesh, I'm tired already. All-in-all, I'd be willing to give it something above a "3" but then I have to beat it up again b/c getting to that class and being reimbursed for it isn't seamless. Heck, I may as well pay for the damn course myself... now to get approval for time-off to do some non-billable studies. :-(
Relentless focus on customer results: 3
Justification: Again here, there's alot of talk about quality for the customer. But, I'm not yet convinced that Cummulative Dollar-value of Savings to the Customer is the best metric. I'd be willing to assign a higher score if I could say we were tracking other metrics along the lines of the Dupont equation (where growth factors are analyzed like: ROE, Sales, Assets, Profits, Equity) and not one that just defines "value" on how well the organization cuts cost. But where before I was "beating up" the score for something. Here I'm willing to lift it up a bit from the lows because the company I'm thinking about does spend time meeting with its clients.
Energizing systems and structures: 1.75
Justification: Ahhh... what the hell. There's no clean way around this one. The damned things just don't align. I can see it. The leaders know it. The managers complain about it. And yet here we still are...
Shared power and high involvement: 2.25
Justification: Can't give too high a mark on this one either, I'm afraid. I see people being spoken to. Information from above is readily shared. So kudos there for the leadership. But in terms of establishing and incenting for cross-functional working groups, committees, or inter-departmental Six-sigma type efforts, god forbid that time comes up non-billable.