Building the High Performance Organisation (part I)

I am proud of my team and the fantastic people who are turning our company from the days where we struggled into a High Performance Organisation (HPO) with a modern culture. We recently published our first quarter results and the commitment to our transformation and ‘focus on the right things’ continues to shine through. P?yry is performing and the pride is lifting – we have a spring in our step once more.

My job as a leader doesn’t stop here. I need to get the best out of every one of our intrapreneurs – a company is only as good as the people who make it. And to be a HPO we need everyone to be making it together. The key questions I engage my team around are ‘How do we create a climate for sustaining high performance?’ and ‘How are we enabling the best ideas to flow from all our talented people?’

During the difficult years after the financial crisis our company was heavily focussed on clean-up and risk minimisation. Management time was eaten up by compiling and scrutinising detailed reports – over and above empowering and energising teams. 

We were failing to leverage our unique DNA, which had been laid down over the decades since the company was founded in 1958. Culture was not something that was openly discussed, consciously nurtured and embraced. Instead, change was characterised by shifting internal structures and too many guidelines, rather than gearing to the things that mattered most. And of course, everyone was ‘working extremely hard’ and was always ‘very busy’.

However, times have changed and our culture is now connected closely with HPO. As we are building our HPO some people might curiously ask ‘Why do we want to be a HPO?’ Let’s flip it the other way around and ask:

‘Who wouldn’t want to be working for a company that is… renowned to be best-in-class; always delighting their clients; the #1 employer of choice in their field; building amazing solutions and creating new futures; constantly achieving strong financial results; continuously growing and developing; and always better than the competition?’

HPOs need to show how their people benefit. Great organisations know how to retain great people.

Imagine the HPO job advertisement: ‘Do you want to work in an inspiring atmosphere where you get to grow and develop every day, fulfil your ambitions and help steer incredible projects whilst receiving a competitive salary and are rewarded fairly for your work? Do you want to work in a place where get to contribute to a more sustainable world and ultimately, where you get to make a difference?’

So what are the ingredients for sustaining the HPO?

It all starts with the people. In a HPO, each person’s contribution counts. And HPOs have the right people in the right places who trust in their colleagues and whose colleagues can always depend on them. It’s not about individuals either – in HPO’s it’s the Team that makes it happen.

And every person and every team in the HPO is focusing on what matters the most. Everyone knows what’s expected from them and what’s needed in order to achieve the impact and the results. They focus on the actions, which benefit both the clients and the company.

In the HPO there is a shared hunger for success and everyone is playing to win together – just like an elite sports team. People have high targets – agreed together – yet people have even higher ambition levels. To satiate their continuous hunger, the bar is constantly raised and every person is empowered to seek and convert opportunities in every project. I think of one of my teams whose country has been battling years of economic adversity and political unrest. Today, they are now bringing in outstanding results, but continue to challenge themselves ‘is our target high enough?’/ ‘can we do even better?’

Immense pride is something that goes hand-in-hand with the HPO. My teams are very proud of the complex challenges that they solve for customers. And they like to talk about the new solutions they are creating. Many of our younger talents like to be contributing to a sustainable world. For example, our bio-industry experts talk openly in SoMe about how excited they are to be tackling the plastic problem by pioneering bio-based alternatives to plastic. In HPOs it is not only about winning and succeeding and celebrating these triumphs together. HPOs ‘do good things and talk about them’.

So how do we make the HPO self-sustaining? It’s about continuous long term renewal and upgrade. This means constantly investing in people, competence, services, processes and tools. It means channelling and converting the restless desire to create additional client value. And always listening – developing systematic processes for collecting and utilising people and client feedback in order to reach even higher levels of performance and pride.