Outperforming Organisations; The Right Approach

By Akpeli Othuke Andrew

An outperforming organisation is simply any organisation with a positive outlook. Profitability is the major metric to measure the standard of performance of a business entity. It is a product of its revenue and expenses. Some organizations manage outstanding performance through increased revenue above cost while others achieve the same result by reducing costs drastically to remain competitive, especially in a volatile business environment as we have now. In cutting costs, some organizations adopt redundancy as an option, however, the cost and effects (negative) of doing this, if not well-managed might be too much to bear in the long run.

1. Have a right focus

2. Manage your customers

3. Manage your people well

4. Recruit/Hire right

5. Training and Development

6. Manage performance

7. Provide value-centric Leadership

The focus of many businesses today has been the bottom-line. It is an integral part aspect of an organization’s existence; however it is important to understand that there is always a path the to end called profitability. That path is summarized with the popular saying, THE CUSTOMER IS KING. Regardless of the quality of your product or service, it will be irrelevant where it fail to satisfy the needs of the customer. According to Ken Blanchard, Author. of “The One Minute Manager”, “Profit is the applause you get for taking care of your customers and creating a motivating environment for your people”.

Customer relationship management is another key component. It is not enough to provide valuable services/products that satisfy your customers’ needs but the level of engagement and approach is critical. New businesses spring up daily, new products and strategies emerge in quick succession that has raised the stakes of the level of competition. This sums up that the customer ordinarily have a choice of alternative product or service. However, what will keep them on your client list is their experience in dealing with your organization. There is a saying that “first impression matters most” but the last impression is the take away. What experience will your customer take away from dealing with your organization?

The other set of customers (internal) are your people. They play the role of lead actors in translating the vision of an organization into a visual picture. People are very important in an organization because its success or failure depends on them. They engage customers, service their needs, manage relationships and also play major roles in the day to day running of the organization. As the image of your company, the experience that your customers will take away from interacting with your organization depends on the treatment they get from your people; on the order hand, the way you make your people feel will determine how they relate with your customers. Therefore, to manage a constantly performing organization, you need to establish a system that engages your people and generate buy-in into the vision of the organization to a level of ownership and accountability.

Getting it wrong in recruitment might be a major foundational error. It is important to establish a recruitment strategy/policy that enables you to hire the right set of personnel for the right reason and into right roles. Competence is an important factor in recruitment but it is advisable to consider attitude in hiring. Since relationship management is critical to the vision of what experience you seek to create with your customer, it takes a person of good attitude to translate your vision into action, in sync with the expected behavioral values.

After you have recruited a set of good people, it is suicidal to enlist them on jobs immediately. Your strategy should include a system that fast track their growth through necessary trainings and developmental programs. It is important to note that while people can be trained for competence, character is almost impossible to train, hence the need to hire right and then train.

Establishing a well-rounded performance management system is essential as it serves as the tool for input generation (raw material) and evaluation of output (feedback) for the individual and the organization.

There are three stages in performance management;

The first stage is Performance Development Planning (PDP) stage. This is the stage where the goals and objective to pursue, reporting standards and other key indicators are agreed upon by the Manager and an employee. This stage requires more focus, clarity of communication and understanding of the key deliverables.

The second stage is Performance Monitoring and Reporting (PMR) stage. After the objective and job description has been clarified, this is the stage where the employee is engaged productively on the job. A good performance management system adopts this stage as a medium to coach on weakness and recognize as well as praise good performance on the spur to motivate the employee.

The and final stage is Performance Evaluation (PE) stage. This is the annual overall organizational performance evaluation stage. The Line Manager appraises each individual employee. A good performance evaluation system is also advisable to include objective assessment testing as a means to defining promotion proposal and training needs.

7. Provide Value-Centric Leadership

Leadership is another element that distinguishes outperforming organizations from the others. The kind of leadership that is available to the people will definitely have a great impact on the organization. According to John C. Maxwell, he said, “Leadership is influential”, Leadership is all about vision and action. So succeeding is about how well your organizational visions are backed by actions.

In conclusion, profitability is a healthy business objective that should be given utmost priority, but align your organizational vision to the customers’ identified needs and establish a system that makes your people feel good and deliver beyond your brand promise and watch as out-of-the-blues performance grace your organisation’s bottom-line.

Feel free to add your comments in the box below.