Results That Last: Hardwiring Behaviors That Will Take Your Company to the Top (Hardcover)

by Quint Studer (Author)
Key Phrases: accountability grid, align behaviors, decision matrix, Key Times, Studer Group, Five Pillars (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
How to build a corporate culture that continuously gets results Quint Studer has built a thriving career on helping healthcare companies achieve maximum effectiveness and consistent bottom-line results. Now, in Results That Last, he brings his ideas to the rest of the business world. Studer teaches leaders in every industry how to apply his tactics and strategies to their own organizations to build a corporate culture that consistently reaches and exceeds its goals. He has a gift for helping struggling companies implement and hardwire brilliantly simple fixes that solve larger problems in a self-perpetuating, almost organic way. Written in a conversational, easy-to-read format, each chapter includes compelling real-world stories that bring Studer's prescriptions to vibrant life. Results That Last offers sound, proven tactics for turning troubled businesses into consistent moneymakers.

Quint Studer (Gulf Breeze, FL) is an acclaimed leadership and healthcare consultant and the founder of the Studer Group, an outcome firm that coaches some 300 hospitals and health systems on achieving operational excellence. He is also the author of the self-published hit Hardwiring Excellence, a book that has more than 200,000 copies currently in circulation.

From the Inside Flap
Business results that truly last don't come from products and services or particular employees and leaders, no matter how good they are. Products change and evolve; people come and go. What really leads to sustainable business results over time is quality leadership--not leaders, but leadership. Consistently excellent leadership is the key to long-term success and profitability. But how do you develop it? In Results That Last, "Master of Business" Quint Studer shows you how to build an organizational culture that develops great leaders today and instills the mechanisms and the mindset that will continue to foster great leadership tomorrow. Studer pre-sents the most effective leadership practices and shows you how to apply them across every group, department, or division, resulting in improved leadership and performance on the individual, group, and organizational levels.

The practical and proven tools and techniques Studerreveals are designed to align your goals, behaviors, andprocesses in a way that virtually guarantees leadership excellence, vastly improved customer relations, and organizational outcomes. The Results That Last methodology provides real, workable solutions that help you:

* Standardize the behavior and responses of leaders to ensure a consistent experience for employees and customers * Align processes to lessen confusion andincrease effectiveness * Bring leaders in line with organizational goalsand values * Adopt and master key tactics like Rounding for Outcomes and Managing Up * Determine what employees need and want from leadership and how to deliver it, creating better morale and increased personal accountability * Employ an objective evaluation system that keeps leaders on track to reach organizational goals and achieve personal excellence

Results That Last helps you develop standardized leadership practices that will survive in your organization much longer than any individual leader or team. The result is better strategy, better employee and customer relations, and bigger long-term profits. With the right practices in place, your organization's success won't depend on individuals. Instead, excellence will be hardwired into your culture--giving you a sustainable, tangible advantage over the competition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (October 19, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471757292
• ISBN-13: 978-0471757290
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #23,802 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Results-Driven Leadership > Outstanding Organizational Performance, May 8, 2008

By	Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In the Introduction to this book, Quint Studer makes the following assertion: "Standardize the right leadership practices and you will find that organizational performance improves across the board...and stays improved." More specifically, results-driven leadership at all levels and in all areas will achieve and then sustain outstanding performance throughout the given enterprise. That's obvious. Here's the challenge: To get the right goals, the right behavior, and the right processes in proper alignment. More specifically:

1. Have stretch goals that everyone understands and supports, then measure performance in terms of progress toward achievement of those goals. At all times, know what is most important and focus on doing it.

2. View behavior from two separate but related perspectives: values and productivity. At companies such as GE and Southwest Airlines, for example, there is zero tolerance of inappropriate behavior no matter how productive the given offender may be. At the same time, people are expected to produce results (Jack Welch calls it "hitting the numbers") or seek career opportunities elsewhere.

Note: I agree with Studer that the behavior of all supervisors must be "standardized," at least to the extent that they have impeccable character, know their stuff, provide constructive criticism whenever it is needed, earn and remain worthy of trust, and do everything humanly possible and appropriate in the best interests of those entrusted to their care. That said, allowances must be made for differences in personality, lifestyle decisions, avocations, etc.

3. Make all processes as simple as possible...but no simpler. Many processes streets that remain essentially unchanged (except for occasional repairs) even as residents of homes, merchants and their customers, and students enrolled in schools come and go. This is especially true of the process by which an organization such as the U.S. Marines develops leadership. "Many are called, a few are chosen" and then all receive rigorous formal training with hands-on daily supervision as they are absorbed by the culture and identify with its values, meanwhile strengthening individual skills, enriching personal knowledge, and - over time - adding increasing value to the organization.

According to Studer, "Evidence-based leadership (EBL) enables us to create results that last. What is EBL? It's a strategy centered on using the current `best practices' in leadership - practices that are proven to redsult in the best possible outcomes. The `evidence,' in this context, is the reams of data collected from study after study that aim to determine what people really want and need from their leaders. When leaders apply these tried-and-true tactics to every corner of our organizations, we achieve consistent excellence. Our organization's success is no longer dependent on individuals. It's hardwired. No matter who leaves, the excellence remains."

Throughout his narrative, Studer explains how EBL enables those who practice it to identify and deal with "High, Middle, and Low Performers," recognize the five critical elements employees want from managers, "manage up" to improve the performance of those they supervise, measure performance fairly and consistently, improve employee selection and retention, "harvest" intellectual capital, take a customer-centric approach, and build a culture around service, and serve as a role model for effective communication, cooperation, and collaboration.

Well-done!

Those who share my regard for this book are urged to check out Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management co-authored by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton as well as their earlier book, The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action as well as Edward Lawler's Talent: Making People Your Competitive Advantage, Robert Mittelstaedt's Will Your Next Mistake Be Fatal?: Avoiding the Chain of Mistakes Which Can Destroy Your Company, Michael Levine's Broken Windows, Broken Business: How the Smallest Remedies Reap the Biggest Rewards, George S. Day and Paul J.H. Schoemaker's Peripheral Vision: Detecting the Weak Signals That Will Make or Break Your Company, and Sydney Finkelstein's Why Smart Executives Fail and What You Can Learn from Their Mistakes.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not just for health nuts, November 7, 2007

By	J. R. Gordon "A. Lifelong Student" (Pensacola, Fla USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Those familiar with the author or The Studer Group's work, may assume that this is another look at how to better manage America's hospitals. Nothing could be further from the truth. The author's direct writing style, supported by many real life examples, and a goodly portion of common sense make this a valuable addition to any manager's bookshelf - or better yet, their briefcase.

The book has several sample instruments that help the reader move from having an interest in the subject of leadership to actually doing it. As a working management consultant, I've ordered copies of this book for the leadership team of my current struggling client - who is not in healthcare.

Quint's recommendations may sound difficult to some and too simple to others, but, in my mind, they are practical and beneficial to any organization, small or large, that wants to step up their achievement.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Feast of Leadership Tactics, December 17, 2007

By	Dennis DeWilde "The Performance Connection" (Cleveland area, Ohio USA) - See all my reviews

When I can across this book, I noticed that it had relatively few reviews for a book that has hit the Wall Street Journal's Best-selling list. After reading it, I understood why - although an easy read, it is so brimming with various leadership tactics that it is not easy to summarize for a complete review. While most business books are based upon a sound idea which could, and should, have been expressed in a ten page HBR article and not stretched into a 250+ page book, this one is quite the opposite. Even though it is written in plain spoken, dialogue format, with plenty of story examples; this book feels like a condensed compilation of management ideas and leadership tactics organized around the author's very successful career experience in the healthcare industry. The outcome is a page-turner of prescriptive to-do's that offer something for every key leadership issue, with a special emphasis on establishing goals and measurement of results.

The book is dedicated to the development of a culture of performance excellence - an excellent culture is declared more important than an excellent strategy. Each chapter is linked to an "Evidence-based Leadership" graphic and one of its three components - Aligned Goals; Aligned Behavior; Aligned Processes - as the drivers for hardwiring performance.

The book opens with Studer's three most important leadership tactics: Sort employees (called high, middle, and low conversations); Use walk-about-management, but make it purposeful (called rounding for outcomes); look for and speak about the positive & contribution from others (called managing up - rather than talking down, I concluded). Each chapter contains recommended steps for implementing these tactics.

The next section is called "The Core", and introduces Studer's organizational flywheel with the three elements; Passion (Self-Motivation), Principles (Prescriptive To Do's), & Results (Bottom Line) revolving around Peoples Personal Values - purpose, worthwhile work, and making a difference. Taking 'Self-Motivation' at its word, there are no tactics for integrating an individual's passion into organizational performance. And, even for leaders, ME Inc. must give way to Business Inc. thru standardization tactics devoted to reducing leadership variance. Prescriptive to-do's and results measurement are the focus for the author's hardwiring process. Goals and measurement are organized under five performance pillars - Service, Quality, People, Finance, and Growth.

The book then moves thru an Employee Tactics section and a Customer Tactics section. Satisfied employees are at the top of the list - an employee survey to diagnose satisfaction is recommended, perhaps using the Gallup ("First, Break all the Rules") Organization's 12 key questions as a basis. Know 'what' is important to your employees, reward and recognize, and many other tactics for helping employees feel that their job is worthwhile and that they can make a difference are part of the employee tactics section. A service culture underpins the customer tactics section.

I liked the book for its many useful and practical tactics for focusing an organization on its performance goals - almost all of which are applicable outside of the healthcare industry. A word of caution is advised: the book does at times feel like a Studer Group marketing brochure and its 'leader-as-hero' underpinnings give some tactics an inauthentic feel. However, the many useful ideas are worth these distractions.

Dennis DeWilde, author of
"The Performance Connection"