Peak Performance Culture. Dave Mitchell
id="ulink_fc86c4a7-a9d2-5765-a4ad-faa50201900f">By 1981, it had become clear that a debilitating lack of talent was likely to create a ceiling for my baseball career well below the major leagues. So it was, after my sophomore year of college, that I needed to choose a major. Since I had worked part‐time at a commercial radio station – shout out to WCRA/WCRC FM in Effingham, Illinois—and the closed‐circuit radio station on the college campus at Eastern Illinois University, I decided that Mass Communications would make the most sense. Heck, I might well become a sportscaster, the next best thing to nabbing the first baseman position for the New York Mets (my original occupational aspiration). My guidance counselor concurred but offered one suggestion. Given that I had a highgrade point average and appeared to arrive at my academic major largely based on convenience rather than aptitude, she encouraged me to augment my Mass Comm major with a business administration minor. You know, just in case my sportscasting career went the way of my baseball career.
When my broadcasting career fizzled – turns out the guidance counselor was on to something – I found myself without a clear idea about my professional future. I bounced around for a year – a very interesting year that you really should ask me about if we are having a glass of wine together. Eventually, I ended up in Chicago and working in retail. About six months into a job as a customer service representative – a job that essentially meant that you got yelled at by angry people for 8 hours and then went home to a frozen dinner alone in a roach‐infested apartment (but I don't want to romanticize it), a position as a trainer opened up. My first job in human resources development was teaching new hires how to use the point of sale system at Marshall Field's. I loved it.
The job was hard. I led eight‐hour training sessions on highly repetitive tasks. It wasn't sexy, or fun. At least it wasn't for most people, but it was for me. I still remember meetings with other store trainers during the holiday season hiring blitz. They all had the same look: dead eyes, expressionless face, shuffling gate, garbled muttering under their breath that sounded vaguely like a countdown until Thanksgiving—the unofficial end date of the seasonal hiring. Not me, however. I couldn't wait to get up in front of a new class, memorize their names, beguile them with stories of how to navigate a credit card sale to be shipped out of state as a gift to a third party using an American Express card. Good times. I had found my passion.
Unfortunately, I became the epitome of the “Peter Principle” – Laurence Peter's observation that people tend to get promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. I find Laurence's observations a little constrictive. I think the Peter Principle is broader than reaching a level of incompetence. I think many people simply reach a level of disinterest. After over a decade of promotions within the field of human resources development, I had reached an executive level that was entirely about strategies, budgets, staffing, and litigation defense. The area of passion that ignited my career – training and education – was nary a part of my last corporate job. I knew I needed to realign my profession with my joy.
“FAT ENOUGH, HAPPY ENOUGH” ISN'T ENOUGH
In 1995, I left corporate America to pursue my muse: the Leadership Difference, Inc. Armed with a business plan and a passion for training and development, I envisioned myself providing high‐level leadership development to small‐ and medium‐sized companies that otherwise could not afford to have a full‐time staff member dedicated to this role. That vision has evolved over the years; now I spend more time delivering keynote speeches than seminars. But the 25 years since has given me a glimpse – sometimes more – into the vagaries that constitute “organizational culture.”
In 1995, the concept of corporate culture was just finding an audience in the business world. It had existed for around 30 years – largely as an academic construct – but had become more popular as an organizational development consideration in the 1980s and 1990s. It was still a bit of an enigma – one that continues to this day. What exactly is a “culture”? More importantly, what kind of culture drives peak performance? Finally, how do I create a peak performance culture?
That's the challenge.
As an aside, there is an important lesson in my own company's evolution. It began with a vision to be the training and development partner to other organizations. Providing education is my passion. That passion supplied the fuel to begin my organization, but that alone would not be enough to sustain it. Much of what follows in this book is a map for harnessing and directing passion in a way that will achieve success. Without passion, there can be no success; but passion without structure is a recipe for failure. I see that every day in business. That is an important thing to understand about a peak performance culture. Culture is not entirely conceptual. It requires that you combine concept with execution, principles with practices, vision with pragmatism.
Interestingly, it may not be the best organizations from which I have learned the most. Most of the companies and associations I have been exposed to do not apply the best practices outlined in this book. The truth is, even relatively successful organizations are plodding along, using processes that hamstring their success. It is a variation of the “no news is good news” mentality in that they have managed to do things just good enough to have success that is just good enough. Perhaps the better cliché is “fat and happy.” Or maybe “fat enough and happy enough.” But fat enough and happy enough do not allow you to achieve a peak performance culture.
For example, in preparation for a speaking engagement, I like to schedule a phone call with the key contact(s) to better understand their goals for the session. Minimally, I like to know the demographics of the audience and how they will benefit by and apply the concepts that I will be sharing. Optimally, I would like to integrate my content within the broader context of the conference at large or the strategies of the organization. This exercise is a version of “horizontal alignment,” a concept that will be explained later in the book. Peak performance culture requires broad vision, strategies, and ideologies designed to connect the needs of the market with the measures of organizational success.
Most of my clients are eager to provide at least a minimal amount of information for this purpose. Now, that sounds hopeful, but consider for a moment the fact that a significant percentage of my clients don't take the time to educate a guest speaker on information that will make the transfer of learning easier and enhance the likelihood of the attendees actually applying new and useful skills. That is a bit shocking to me. Add to that fact that only a handful of clients each year take the time to help me understand their current strategic approach, and how I can and should align with that during my presentation. I don't think this is an oversight of communication so much as a lack of clarity on that strategy. Many conferences don't have a clear purpose, desired outcomes, or even a theme.
I am not sharing that to shame anyone. People are busy. Conferences and training seminars are often constructed from checklists rather than strategic plans. Location determined, check. Agenda created, check. Invites sent, check. Speaker hired, check. Hotel rooms reserved, check. Our lives are quickly enveloped by activities – “things to do” lists that seduce us into thinking we are working hard to achieve success. I am a box to be checked. This approach results in tons of tasks, but little attention to the event's purpose. Much of this work rhythm is created by the lack of the strong infrastructure described in this book. These events are not supporting some broader approach to peak performance so much as they are an annual event that the organization schedules because, well, we did one last year. Peak performance cultures are not just horizontally aligned, but also vertically aligned. This means that all the tasks within the organization are being performed for reasons that can be tracked back to the company's core vision, strategy, and ideology.
For example, a recent client approached me to do strategic planning facilitation. The group represented a local chapter of a national organization that is well known and established. To successfully facilitate the construction of a new strategy, I felt it would be beneficial for me to understand past strategic plans, the process they used to achieve them, and the usefulness these past efforts had on actual results. To that end, I met with the organization's executive director.
Turns out, the organization had no strategic plan and had never had one. They had a generic mission statement that