Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive Advantage [Hardcover]

Scott Keller (Author), Colin Price (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 21, 2011

The secret of achieving and sustaining organizational excellence revealed

In an ever-changing world where only a third of excellent organizations stay that way over the long term, and where even fewer are able to implement successful change programs, leaders are in need of big ideas and new tools to thrive. In Beyond Performance, McKinsey & Company's Scott Keller and Colin Price give you everything you need to build an organization that can execute in the short run and has the vitality to prosper over the long term.

Drawing on the most exhaustive research effort of its kind on organizational effectiveness and change management, Keller and Price put hard science behind their big idea: that the health of an organization is equally as important as its performance. In the book's foreword, management guru Gary Hamel refers to this notion as "a new manifesto for thinking about organizations."

• The authors illustrate why copying management best practices from other companies is more dangerous than helpful
• Clearly explains how to determine the mutually reinforcing combination of management practices that best fits your organization's context
• Provides practical tools to achieve superior levels of performance and health through a staged change process: aspire, assess, architect, act, and advance. Among these are new techniques for dealing with those aspects of human behavior that are seemingly irrational (and therefore confound even the smartest leaders), yet entirely predictable

Ultimately, building a healthy organization is an intangible asset that competitors copy at their peril and that enables you to skillfully adapt to and shape your environment faster than others—giving you the ultimate competitive advantage.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'a robust tool of measurement...thorough and clear' CPO Agenda

Review

"Beyond Performance is a gem – it is evidence-based, emotionally compelling, and relentlessly useful. If you want to create a team or organization that enjoys sustained financial performance—and where people love to work—this delightful book is for you."
—Robert Sutton, Stanford Professor and author of Good Boss, Bad Boss

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (June 21, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1118024621
• ISBN-13: 978-1118024621
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 1 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,381 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #32 in Books > Business & Investing > Organizational Behavior > Organizational Learning

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful, Profound Lessons July 6, 2011

By John Chancellor TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

The pace of change in all aspects of our lives is increasing faster than ever. In order to just stay even, businesses, governments and non-profits must become more agile, more adaptable - in short they must accomplish one of the more difficult feats for large organizations - change.

Most change initiatives do not achieve the lofty goals they set out to accomplish. According to the authors, "When change programs fail, it's more often than not down to unproductive management behavior, unhelpful employee attitudes, or both."

But as Scott Keller and Colin Price, the authors, point out, it is not just change in operational efficiency which matters. Change focused on some narrow segment of performance only works in the short term and generally at a very high cost in terms of employee morale.

The authors based on very extensive research carried out over a multi-year period have developed a blue print for change that really works. There is equal emphasis on operational performance and the soft-side of business or what they call health. According to their research, "roughly 50 percent of performance variation between companies is accounted for by differences in organizational health."

In Part I of the book the authors advance the overall premise of the book. That sustained excellence is achieved by paying close attention to performance and health. When seeking to bring about change in any organization, you must focus on both performance and health. The authors have identified five questions which must be answered to bring about desired change.

They have grouped the questions under the following headings:
Aspire: Where do we want to go?
Assess: How ready are we to go there?
Architect: What do we need to do to get there?
Act: How do we manage the journey?
Advance: How do we keep moving forward?

They then break this down further by asking more detailed questions under the same heading for performance and for health.

Part II of the book deals with the five frames in much greater detail. They give examples of each frame in action, showing how various companies put these concepts into action.

Part III of the book ties all the information together.

The book is well written and full of very helpful examples of real life companies. There is plenty of research to back up the concepts they advance.

It is most applicable to larger organizations. While it is easy to understand the theory, I suspect that most companies would do well to seek assistance in trying to implement the study and measurement of the health of their organization. But based on the case studies in the book, the cost of such help is insignificant in relation to the payback.

The information in this book is very compelling. Many books have proclaimed the old command and control management is outdated. But this book takes the soft skills of management - the health of organizations - and shows clearly how it affects the bottom line.

A very important book which should be read and studied and the concepts implemented if you want your organization to be on the leading edge.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring and practical July 8, 2011

By Steven Aronowitz

Format:Hardcover

The real life stories of people who have made transformations in their organizations are inspiring. Even more powerful are the practical tools and tips that make it possible for anyone to put this approach into action.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Extensively Researched and Clearly Written August 28, 2011

By Jim Clemmer

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is an outstanding book that should become a classic for its extensive research on leadership and organization effectiveness. It's based on "surveys on the drivers of organizational performance and health from more than 600,000 respondents from 500 organizations across the globe, surveys on the experience of transformational change from more than 6,800 CEOs and senior executives, reviews of more than 900 books and articles from academic journals, one-on-one interviews... the culmination of one of the most extensive research efforts ever undertaken in this area."

Keller and Price reinforce the decades of accumulating research showing that roughly 70% of organizational change programs fail. Central to that high failure rate are huge shortfalls in developing the "soft skills" of leadership and culture. This is what the authors mean by going beyond performance ("what an enterprise delivers to its stakeholders in financial and operational terms") to organizational health ("the ability of an organization to align, execute, and renew itself").

Beyond Performance is misnamed. The book should really be entitled "Healthy Performance." Keller and Price provide strong and well reasoned arguments -- underpinned by their massive research -- for balancing hard performance results with soft health factors. Highly effective organizations have both. This balancing of management versus leadership is central to The CLEMMER Group's work and the foundation of The Leader's Digest: Timeless Principles for Team and Organization Success (as introduced in Chapter One).

But it's through the so-called "soft skills" (that can be very hard to implement) that teams and organizations get results; "... change programs with clearly defined aspirations for both performance and health are 4.4 times more likely to be extremely successful than those with clear aspirations for performance alone..." Although balancing both management and leadership is critical (I often liken it to asking which wing of the plane you'd like to do without), Keller and Price focus on health because their research overwhelming shows "most companies already know how to keep an eye on performance; it's their health that more often suffers from neglect."

Beyond Performance is full of examples and practical advice. A very useful feature of the book is its implementation models and frameworks. A central model is the "five frames" they call the "5As" with chapters organized around each one:

Aspire: Where do we want to go?
Assess: How ready are we to go there?
Architect: What do we need to do to get there?
Act: How do we manage the journey?
Advance: How do we keep moving forward?

Keller and Price go on to identify, "three attributes of organizational health; internal alignment, quality of execution, and capacity for renewal." These are supported and sustained with "a definition of organizational health that consists of nine elements that combine in different ways to support and sustain them:
1. Direction
2. Leadership
3. Culture and Climate
4. Accountability
5. Coordination and Control
6. Capabilities
7. Motivation
8. External orientation
9. Innovation and Learning"

I must confess; a big reason I love Beyond Performance is because it provides such deep research and further validation to the leadership and organization development approaches we've used successfully for three decades. When used as directed, this works! In fact, the authors should be much stronger in their writing style, conclusions, and advice. The editing should have been tighter to eliminate redundant words, awkward sentences, and waffling phrases.

I highly recommend Beyond Performance to leaders looking for transformation pathways to peak performance. It's also an extremely useful field guide for human resources, organization development, senior safety, lean, or service/quality professionals and similar senior support executives building healthier and higher-performing organizations.