Despite the diverse range of industries--business, sports, technology, finance, education, and the arts--each of these successful institutions share a common bond: they are world-class industry leaders and have repeatedly outperformed their competition.
"At the heart of every institution whose advantage has endured lies an organizational model that works more effectively than its competitors," say authors Brian MacNeice and James Bowen in their new book, POWERHOUSE. The authors have sought to highlight those lessons that leaders of other organizations can learn from these institutions to put into practice themselves.
Having completed their research of the individual institutions, and looking across the portfolio of their case studies, they can draw two conclusions from their work that relate to the delivery of sustained high performance more broadly:
- The first is that enduring high performance reflects a competitive advantage that is fundamentally organizational in nature.
- The second conclusion is that there are generic lessons to be learned from studying high performance across multiple disciplines that have application in specific individual situations.
POWERHOUSE provides a four-pillar approach to developing high performance:
- Plan Establishing and maintaining a vision/mission for the organization
- Priorities Establishing short-term, organization-wide focus and milestones for achieving progress
- People Defining a behavioral code for the organization
- Process Designing the organizational structures and processes to achieve the vision/mission statement
Source: Brian MacNeice: Powerhouse: Insider Accounts into the World's Top High-performance Organizations