Over the last few weeks I have talked about a groundbreaking study (the Evergreen Project) of 200 management techniques reveal a surprising result: most techniques have no direct impact on superior business performance. What does is the mastery of business basics. To achieve superior performance you have to excel in four primary practices – strategy, execution, culture and structure. This week we focus on culture.
Culture advocates sometimes argue that if you can make work fun, all else will follow. The results of the study suggested that holding high expectations about performance matters alot more.
- Inspire all managers and employees to do their best
- Empower employees and management to make independent decisions and to find ways to improve operations – including their own
- Reward achievement with pay based performance, but keep raising the performance bar
- Pay psychological rewards in addition to financial ones
- Create a challenging, satisfying work environment
- Establish and ‘live’ by clear company values
