As we move into 2009, the focus on organizational performance has never been higher. Consequently, the ramifications of low performance have never been greater. Organizations around the world are taking a closer look at performance in a large-scale effort to execute strategies that lead to high performance. Fittingly, President-elect Obama recently announced the creation of a Chief Performance Officer (CPO) position, and appointed Nancy Killefer to the role to oversee budget and spending reform in the U.S. government.

The starting point on the path to high performance varies for every organization, yet the journey to get there contains consistent components. In the case of the U.S. government, a multi-faceted strategy has been defined, but a key component is continuous process improvement. Charged with leading this reform, the CPO has been asked by President-elect Obama to “work with economic officials to increase efficiencies and eliminate waste in government spending.”

For many other organizations, the path to high performance might begin with focused and aligned leaders and/or the implementation of enabling technologies, but regardless of the starting point, the key to starting the journey towards high performance is the development of a roadmap. A roadmap defines where the organization is going and each step along the path staying the course towards high performance. It is used as an assessment tool to enable leaders within the organization to track progress and measure success.

A strong roadmap will objectively evaluate the current organization and focus on the critical initiatives needed to improve performance in each of the Five Key Drivers of High Performance™.

Realistic roadmap tips for high performance include:

• Optimize and integrate the Five Key Drivers of High-Performance Organizations across the entire organization.
• Pace implementation; not everything has to happen all at once.
• Plan incremental steps, and measure results along the way.

Has your organization defined a roadmap for high performance?

Tags: Continous Process Improvement, Five Key Drivers of High Performance, Focused and Aligned Leaders, Obama, Roadmap, Strategy Execution

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 9:30 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.