Building a Performance Culture

In the past 100 years it has been innovation in business management more than any other factor that has allowed businesses to cross new performance thresholds. Consider for a moment the business landscape in which we operate:

• Sophisticated brand segmentation
• Educated consumers
• Extremely competitive marketplace
• Mature markets
• Extreme transparency

Management is really the only factor that can set a business apart from its competitors. By creating a corporate culture that is performance oriented, businesses can maximize their competitive edge.

What is a Performance Culture?
A performance culture is developed by throwing out conventions on the way things are or have been done in the past and instead focusing on processes that achieve results, and specific metrics that objectively and reliably measure those results according to the organization's goals.

The first step toward developing a performance culture is development of strategy. By developing strategy, a firm can identify its strategic intent, looking at marketplace insights with a focus on innovation to help develop a business design. Once this is determined, the human assets necessary to implement the strategy can be identified.

Human Resources plays a vital role in building a performance culture within an organization. Once strategy has been devised at the corporate level, execution is arrived at by aligning talent (i.e. personnel), modifying corporate climate and culture and critical tasks to affect the formal organization of the firm. In order to enact this change within an organization, Human Resources must be drawn into the strategic processes of the firm, which is a huge departure from the role HR plays in today's business environment.