Thrive: The Leader's Guide to Building a High Performance Culture

By Andrew Freedman and Paul Elliott

Thrive provides leaders with a clear blueprint for building a high-performance culture. Drawing on extensive experience in change management, organizational development, and performance consulting, Andrew Freedman and Paul Elliott share their systematic approach, known as the Exemplary Performance System (EPS), in a way that enables leaders to take immediate action to shift workforce engagement and performance.

Thrive teaches leaders how to create clarity and alignment around what high performance looks like and how to replicate it at scale, identify and eliminate barriers to performance excellence, effectively align individual and team priorities with those of the company, and build organizational systems and processes that accelerate business and financial results.

Purchasing Thrive also gives readers access to more than twenty accelerators—downloadable tools, templates, and artifacts to help leaders implement the processes and practices that Andrew and Paul share throughout the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781544516097

Book preview

FreedmanElliott_eBook_final.jpg

Thrive

The leader’s guide to building a High Performance Culture

Andrew Freedman

with Paul Elliott, Ph.D

COPYRIGHT © 2021 BY SHIFT MEDIA

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN

978-1-5445-1607-3 Paperback

9978-1-5445-1608-0 Hard Cover

978-1-5445-1609-7 eBook

DESIGN BY:

Foothold Creative

www.footholdcreative.co

My dearest JoAnn,

You are the life force that powers me every day.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Introduction

Section one: Where Are you Today?

Chapter One: Define Success

Chapter Two: Organizational Influences

Chapter Three: Individual Performance

Chapter Four: Analyze Star Employees

Section two: Oh, the places you’ll go!

Chapter Five: Amplify and Accelerate Impact and Results

Chapter Six: Implement Strategy

Chapter Seven: Resistance and Resilience

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Notes

Foreword

The Genesis of THRIVE

Because this book is about change and transformation, and the introspection, resilience, and commitment required to successfully make it, I’m starting it by sharing some things about my personal journey that not many people know—things that set me on a path to thrive in my own life.

I can still remember her reading one of her journal entries to me: …and every time, I lost another piece of me. She told me that, over time, she had lost so much of herself, that if she did not move forward with this decision, at some point, she’d be gone. Completely gone.

I couldn’t breathe.

By my recollection, we had a solid family unit. Although we were not financially rich, my sister and I never wanted for anything. I remember laughter, love, and support while growing up. That my mother was leaving my father floored me. It just did not compute.

My mother read more journal passages to me and shared what her life had really been like over the preceding thirty years. A schoolteacher for more than thirty-six years, she was an exemplar in her profession. Her classes were videotaped to use as training tools for new teachers. She represented teachers in negotiations in her school systems. Students consistently visited her, years after they passed her classes, to tell her what a positive impact she had on their lives. At home, though, things were very different.

We lost our home, saw our father go to jail, had creditors calling us every day for as long as I can remember, and for over fifteen years, my mom worked two jobs just to be sure we could make ends meet. I was aware of these things but did not realize the cumulative toll it had all taken on my mom. She had been eroding, bit by bit, incident by incident. She had even weathered finding out that my father had cheated on her. In fact, I came to understand that he got married to another woman while married to my mom. Drop the mic.

At first, I was enraged at what I learned as she bared her soul to me. That rage then turned to even deeper levels of respect and admiration for her. She had made the choice to stay married for over thirty years, regardless of the circumstances, to ensure her kids had a solid foundation, and the love, support, and education they needed to achieve success in their lives. Until she didn’t. Until she hit a breaking point, one based in a refusal to completely shed who she was—as a mother, as a woman, as a human. At that breaking point, she reclaimed her life and left my father. My mom has been one of my most important role models for doing what is right, living life with an open mind and heart, trusting freely, and generously giving time, energy, and effort, regardless of what would come in return. As she shared all of this with me, I could see the trajectory of my life change ahead of me.

In that moment, everything became so clear, so easy. I reflected on my life, who I was, what I stood for, and my current situation. I resolved myself to never settle for anything that did not absolutely set my soul on fire. This meant jobs, friendships, hobbies, vacations, and most definitely personal relationships. Very soon after this time with my mom, I filed for a divorce.

I was in a bad marriage that was only getting worse. I had been making bad personal and financial choices, choosing destructive self-soothing methods, and telling myself that I deserved what was going wrong in my life. The reality was that if I had not stopped tolerating my own poor mindset and behavior, I would have gone down a very dark path, likely worse than what my mother had traveled. I made a commitment to myself that I would not accept a reality wherein I didn’t behave like the person I knew I really was: good, honest, true, trusting, and here to bring out the greatness in others.

No more playing small, playing scared, and playing the victim. I knew the way forward meant fully immersing myself in the things that absolutely lit me up. A life where every day, I would wake up inspired to help others have an existence that left them feeling more alive, not less; more connected to others, not more distant from them; more passionate about their careers, not more disengaged; and more fulfilled in life, not emptier.

Soon after this realization and commitment, I knew that for me to bring this vision to reality, I had to operate at scale. Impacting one person at a time did light me up, but it was not enough. I was destined for more. I changed my career path so I could be a catalyst for more growth and impact. That is what brought me to SHIFT. I understood that the art and science of building high-performing company cultures is intrinsically related to helping people find their purpose.

Through this work, I see leaders change their mindsets about what is possible for their organizations. I see them reach higher levels of performance on a consistent basis. I see businesses transform before my eyes, becoming magnets for top talent, surpassing goals that they once thought were impossible.

This was when Paul and I started collaborating on strategic initiatives with clients to help them apply the high-performance principles and practices that facilitated growth and business impact. We were onto something powerful, and yet we were just getting started. The story was just beginning to be written. Now Paul and I have decided to share with the world what we know to be true about transforming performance and business results. Our purpose is clear: to help the world THRIVE.

Here we are. Together. Let’s do this.

Introduction

If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.

—Steve Jobs

Imagine a world where your employees can’t wait to get to work every day. They are inspired, fired up by the mission and vision of the company, challenged and energized by their role, and supported by an aligned leadership team. Where, on the thousandth day of work, each individual’s drive to excel surpasses that of their first day on the job, and that drive is made obvious by their results—they consistently exceed expectations.

This world doesn’t need to exist only in your imagination; we know it can be your reality.

Unfortunately, the opposite often occurs. Employees experience their work environments as negative and stifling. They often coast through the tasks, unable to know if their work even mattered or if they had a winning day. Business results reflect this: revenue targets are missed, initiatives and projects fail to deliver the intended ROI, profits remain stagnant or decline, and everyone is working harder for diminishing returns.¹

Ample research over the past eighteen years, including studies done by organizations including Deloitte, Accenture, and our firm, SHIFT, shows that 70 percent of the American workforce is disengaged at work. Whether or not you are familiar with the research, you know what disengagement looks like.

Almost 55 percent of the disengaged population show up as sleepwalkers. Sleepwalkers are not connected to the firm’s mission. They are unclear about and disinterested in the relationship between their role and creating value for customers. They arrive late to work on a regular basis. Instead of taking ownership for project tasks or performance goals, they point to external factors as the basis for failing to meet expectations. Sleepwalkers have a check the box mentality as they seek to just get through the day.

As unproductive as sleepwalkers are, 15 percent of the disengaged population live as something much more dangerous—saboteurs. Saboteurs actively work against company goals. They try to get back at their boss, colleagues, clients, or company. Their worldview includes the perspective that someone did them wrong (e.g., they were unfairly passed over for a promotion or not given opportunities that others have in life). As opposed to looking inward to see how they can improve themselves or the situation, saboteurs try to throw a monkey wrench into the system. They hold informal meetings after the meeting to unwind or undermine company decisions, and they refuse to comply with company policies. They may take an it’s not my job, stance when it comes to solving customer-related issues. Look around. You’ve got them. Saboteurs exist in every organization at every level.

Connected to the unacceptable volume of disengaged employees, research also shows that 70 percent of business transformation and change initiatives fail to deliver the intended results.² This includes failed mergers, system integrations, new product rollouts, and workforce productivity initiatives. Time after time, companies miss deadlines, have budget overruns, and don’t deliver the promised business value. The barriers to higher levels of engagement and performance seem to be everywhere.

There is hope. At SHIFT, our mission is to shift the American workforce from 70 percent disengaged to 70 percent engaged. When people are engaged at work, they go home happier, healthier, and fulfilled. Employee engagement is a positive, purposeful, passionate state of mind. It allows people to build something greater than themselves. We believe business is the spark that will ignite this change.

We can do better. Let us show the way. THRIVE is your blueprint.

Creating a culture of high engagement and high performance

Start with the premise that people are naturally curious and creative, and want to do good work. They want to engage, achieve, make progress, consistently perform at high levels, and feel proud. They want to thrive. When leaders create cultures, systems, and processes that foster these opportunities, employees more fully engage and are more likely to achieve maximum performance at work.

Envision your people as having an insatiable passion and drive for creating a triple-win relationship for the organization, employees, and customers. The customer experience is optimized, and the organization reaches its goals. These employees thrive—committed to the organization, energized by their work, and having created countless opportunities for themselves and others to succeed.

At SHIFT, we believe that consistent high performance stems from having a barrier-free work environment. In this kind of environment, people can perform at their best because of the work systems, as opposed to having to work around or despite those work systems. There is absolute clarity about the purpose and value of each employee’s role, and how that role impacts the organization. Through THRIVE, we will provide you with the framework to make this a reality in your organization. We emphasize the intersection of engagement and performance in this introduction, because it is vital to the success of a company—it is the key to creating a thriving organization.

Before we move on, it is important for us to do a gut check. If you are thinking, I already have a totally engaged workforce or My organization is already high performing; we are doing just fine, please put this book down. If you think you already know everything you need to know about building a winning organization, please put this book down. This book is for those who know that every organization has upside potential, even if it is already stable and profitable. Even industry leaders can keep getting better. In fact, their commitment to continuous evolution is an underlying component of the success they refuse to be seduced by. Companies that claim to have a high-performing culture likely do have pockets of high performance, but it’s not embedded across the entire enterprise.

To transform your organization, company leaders need to be clear about and consistently express what matters most, and what the measures of success look like. They need to answer questions like What does impact look like? What is the purpose of the company? What is the company trying to accomplish? (Hint: it is more than just profit.) True engagement begins with a focus on the critical elements and influences of high performance, and a clear definition of success is one of those elements.

A high-performing organization must create a system that attracts the right people and repels the wrong ones. These high-performance systems are clear and consistent about your beliefs through your mission, vision, and values. High-performing organizations rely on leaders who openly demonstrate the thinking and behavior that align with these articulations of excellence and success. You can’t build high-performing teams without high-performing leaders. It all starts with leadership.

Getting the Most out of this Book

This book is not about finding perpetual joy in the workplace—it’s about truth. Truth through looking in the mirror to understand what accelerates and also decelerates engagement and performance. As Richard Saul Wurman, founder of TED, said, Understanding precedes action. Before you launch one more engagement campaign, change one more compensation plan, install one more new policy or procedure that you think will fix perceived issues, you must first understand the truth. The truth is that the issue may not be your employees. It may start with you.

This book is for leaders who want to understand what really drives high