performance / health

Performance is what an enterprise does to deliver improved results for its stakeholders in financial and operational terms. It's evaluated through measures such as net operating profit, return on capital employed, total returns to shareholders, net operating costs, and stock turn (and the relevant analogs to these in not-for-profit and service industries)... A more memorable way to think about this is through the lens of a manufacturing company in which performance-oriented actions are those that improve how the organization buys raw materials, makes them into products, and sells them into the market to drive financial and operational results. 

Health is how effectively an organization works together in pursuit of a common goal. It is evaluated in levels of accountability, motivation, innovation, coordination, external orientation, and so on. A more memorable way to think about health-related actions is that they are those that improve how an organization internally aligns itself, executes with excellence, and renews itself to sustainably achieve performance aspirations in its ever-changing external environment. 

Make no mistake, leaders have a choice when it comes to where they put their time and energy in making change happen. The big idea in delivering successful change at scale is that leaders should put equal emphasis on performance and health-related efforts....

Short-term gains can be made without tending to health, but they are unlikely to last.

Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger

Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019