The question has been asked: as a manager, you come to your office to find that you have all your plant and equipment, but no people, what would it cost to do what was necessary to develop a new group of people to a point where they were functioning with the same degree of effectiveness as the original organization? Estimates range from 20 to 30 times the annual earnings of those people and suggest that a 4% deterioration in the value of the human organization will completely offset normal profits.

Similarly, a 4% improvement in human effectiveness will double normal profits.

Our bottom line offering to our clients is measurable and sustainable, step improvement around 3 to 6% on a balanced scorecard of their key measures. Over the years we have published numerous case studies across a variety of industries to support this claim, and they are available on request.

Many a consultant is ready to promise that their approach, aimed at solving part of the problem, will provide a total solution. However, total and continuous performance improvement relies on more than just measuring performance or developing goals or putting in a new system. If you are to achieve a sustained performance improvement, nothing short of a purposeful, total and systematic approach will suffice.

Sacher Associates has identified the following ten essential components of team performance that are strongly evident in all high-performance teams and to quote a Hyundai advert: The secret to greater productivity is getting the basics right.

The ten essential components of team performance

• A unified sense of direction
• Strategy or long-term goals
• Outputs and performance measures
• Targets.
• Performance feedback
• Communication
• Training (skills/knowledge)
• Systems and processes
• Structure and job design
• Reward systems

The better an organization develops these components, the better its performance. By developing the ones that need improvement in your organization, you are able to get on with creating a high-performance environment and culture for your organization. When these ten components are systematically built into everyday activities, performance always continuously improves and overall productivity gains of around 3 to 6% become viable.

Many people believe that their organizations have ‘been there, done that’ or are ‘currently doing all of this stuff’. However, many of them are yet to anchor these ten components even minimally, let alone at best practice levels, especially at the workforce and team leader/supervisor levels.

In other organizations, although managers attend in some way to these ten components of team performance, they do not go the distance in ensuring that these components become successfully and permanently entrenched in the work environment or culture – the stage that is directly correlated with the highest levels of employee performance and job satisfaction.

As we are human beings, the potential to improve our performance is limitless, and the competition intense. Our business focus should be on achieving continuous improvement through the increasingly more thorough implementation of these ten essential components.

For more information, we refer you to our best selling book: What do I do on Monday morning?

Detailed references and additional information can be provided on request, and questions are welcome. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.