We sometimes forget that the purpose of leadership and management in organizations is to accelerate business results through people. Because inspirational leadership and effective management can easily become compelling topics on their own, and because many organizations expend significant resources to develop leaders and managers who behave in certain ways, the link to business results can sometimes be lost in the shadow of sought-after personal attributes or competencies thought to characterize good leaders and managers. But let us be clear: the reason we seek to develop these characteristics in our leaders and managers is that we hope they will accelerate business results. This includes both external success indicators, such as customer satisfaction, profitability, and market share, and internal results, such as employee engagement and retention.
This paper explores an approach to organizational leadership and management called Performance Thinking. It provides a means of directly linking the behavior of employees to the organization’s mission and goals, and optimizing conditions that enable the best possible human performance aligned with company strategy and culture.
