The 21 Secret Reasons Why 85% of Organisations Are Underperforming in Terms of Their Full Potential! And 7 Secrets to Solve the Mediocrity Problem.

The State of Performance in Organisations

Numerous studies and research on organisational performance point to a disappointing state of affairs in many organisations around the world. The general trend is that the overwhelming majority of organisations are performing at 20 percent or less of their full potential. This means such organisations are not producing or delivering as much value as they could be based on their human potential. This underperformance is not caused by lack of talent or the environment or lack of opportunities, but simply failing to fully unlock existing human potential and convert it into extra value. The late Stephen R Covey aptly defined how organisations should ideally be performing when he talked about great organisations.

The Gallup Organisation provides an indirect measure of the state of performance in organisations through its employee engagement survey which consistently reveals year in, year out that employee engagement in the majority of organisations is as low as 25% at best. ?This effectively as much as 75 percent or more employee are not fully engaged in their work; most are split between non-engaged and disengaged. It is na?ve to expect that non-engaged and disengaged people can produce their best possible performance and results. As studies on organisation performance point out, the disengaged and none engaged employees also have a tendency to discourage the fully engaged from putting their best possible effort, performance and results. High achievers and peak performers have no patience working in a toxic, or lethargic organisations filled with disengaged mediocre staff; they leave for organisations with higher performance culture.

Now, what are the main causes of these global ubiquity in under performance? There is a litany of reasons or elements that work together to create this state of affairs. For purposes of this discussion, I will group these reasons into the following categories,

1. Leadership Issues
2. Recruitment Issues
3. Performance Management Issues
4. Strategy issues
5. Attitude Issues

1.?????Using a Poor Theory of Organisations and their Performance

2.?????Ignoring the Critical Elements that are Involved in human performance

3.?????Lack Clarity Around Performance and Its Management

4.?????Bad or Inadequate Leadership

5.?????Bad or Ineffective Performance Management

6.?????Using Popular But Outdate Recruitment Approaches and Models

7.?????Confusing Training and Teaching

8.?????Not investing enough in staff training, education and development

9.?????Bad or Poor Work on Building Effective Teams

10.?Using Obsolete Models and Theory of Organisational Performance Management

11.?Totally Ignoring Strategy or Using a Poor Concept of Strategy

12.?Not Taking Warnings and Advice Seriously

13.?Presiding Over a Boring, Lethargic, Toxic Organisation

14.??Being a Victim to Bureaucracy

15.?Assuming a False, Direct Link Between Academic Qualifications and Performance

16.?Not Taking Strategy Seriously or Using a Poor Concept of Strategy and Strategic Planning

17.?Assuming a Direct Link Between Knowledge and Performance

18.?Not Taking Emotional Intelligence Seriously

19.?Ignoring or Not Using Outside Help With Creating and Leading High Performance Teams and Organisations

20.?Having the Wrong People in Key Positions

How to Transform the Performance and Results of Your Organisation

Many leaders and managers think that motivation is all what their people need to raise their performance and shift their results. This is false and misleading. ?Traditional motivation is not enough to shift organisational performance. Instead, organisations need a total and full package comprising of the flowing

1.??????Conduct a strategic independent organisation-wide state of affairs assessment for your organisation in terms of your performance and your current approach to performance management.

2.??????High doses or super-ordinary, inspiring, authentic transformational top leadership

3.??????An excellent and sufficient balance of well structure teaching, training, education and person development

4.??????Equipment and support with effective tools and strategies for managing their own performance.

5.??????Help with strategies for the employees to become their best possible selves profession-wise

6.??????An energising workplace free of emotional and cognitive toxicity

7.??????A genuine and real culture of high level teamwork shown in deeds and policies and not just preached in meetings and workplace halls and corridors. This includes well-structured teamwork management programs beyond the ad-hoc, sporadic “team building workshops” which are best described as organisational building sessions than real team building efforts. While such sessions have some values, they must never be viewed as the ultimate way to build teams.

Conclusion

Contrary to beliefs, you do not need to “hire any extra talent” to transform the performance and results in your organisation. The issue is not about lack of talent; it is underutilising the talent you already have. It is about changing your theory, attitude and practice in organisational management; the rest will fall in place.

You can do this now or latter. But why not now? Why not within the next 120 hours?

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?Simon Bere, 2022