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

 

vision/action

Workplaces that are characterized by any or all of competing agendas and conflict (no alignment on direction), politics and bureaucracy (low quality of execution), and where work is "just a job" (low sense of renewal), aren't just unhealthy for sustainably delivering bottom-line results - they are unhealthy for the human soul. As the Japanese proverb goes, "Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare."

Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger

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

 

the meaning of a sacrifice

Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how can I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, “What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?” “Oh,” he said, “for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!” Whereupon I replied, “You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering — to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her.” He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

Viktor Frankl

Man's Search for Meaning. 1946.

truth vs. embarrassment

When [Head Coach Monty] Williams was asked how he has evolved since New Orleans, he didn’t shy away from being honest.

“I thought I had the answers,” he said. “I was a lot younger, probably more brash, more stubborn. Now I’m starting to figure out the questions. I’m probably in a place in my life where I’m more apt to listen and delegate more.”

Williams had a reputation for butting heads and it sounds like he’s grown from that.

“I understand the difference between telling someone the truth and embarrassing them and that [used to be] one of my flaws in New Orleans,” he said.

Kellan Olson

"Suns’ Monty Williams always adopting concepts, adapting coaching style," Arizona Sports. May 21, 2019

a no whining policy

Everyone has a bad day from time to time, and this tip is not to suggest that we don’t allow each other to be human. But remember, there is a time and a place for venting and the workplace should be neither. Ask everyone to focus on positivity and the work at hand -- and do so yourself. You’ll immediately eliminate an entire category of negativity at the workplace. Suggest that the whole team leave the drama at the door, shift their attitudes to positive ones and make each day the best it can be.

Allison Maslan

"4 Essentials for Inspiring Leadership," Entrepreneur. August 5, 2016