Building a High Performance Organization (Part II)

What if every person in your organization would contribute to high performance?

The best rowers work in High Performing Teams. They work together almost like finely tuned machines. They are able to effortlessly communicate with each other.  Together they give their all to reach their goals, setting higher and higher benchmarks for themselves.

They also know exactly how hard everyone else in the boat is rowing. They can feel when someone is out of sync, or not pulling their weight. They can also feel the exciting moments when it all comes together, when every oar is working fluently at the same time and in the same direction to generate full power. But rowing isn’t just about how hard you can pull, it’s vital that you find the most efficient way of doing it, conserving your energy and performance until exactly the right moment to stay ahead of the competition.

My job as a leader is to actively engage the highest performers sitting in the boat, the highest performers in our teams. They are the ones who will tell me how we can get our performance up, where we can improve, become more efficient, and find more and more value. They are the ones who will spot the perfect moments to push hard to make maximum gains. Real leaders must work together with their best rowers if they want to get high performers in every seat.

At P?yry, our high performers have ‘intrapreneurship’ at the heart of their DNA. Intrapreneurs think and act like it was their own company, their own money. They proactively come forward with new ideas and new innovations. They think about how to get the most value out of a project or an investment, and they engage the team around them to find the smartest ways of finding the best solutions. They are vital in making a high performance organization.

When you have High Performers in every seat, the mood and culture of the team changes dramatically. It makes a big impact on the whole team, with teammates constantly pushing each other to better and better achievements. Recently, one of my intrapreneurs was telling me what makes them proud to be P?yry. They told me that “the constant learning” makes them proud, “to work alongside highly qualified people who are willing to help at any moment, people of great quality who know how to manage without giving orders, hands-on people with great experience … in brief, people that reflect the great company spirit!”

That is what it feels like when you get high performers in every seat - your top performers will thank you for that with generating further increased impact for you, for the team and the whole company.