All of us have the potential to exhibit attitudes and behaviours across a spectrum, from being disruptive to being excellent (see the diagram below). What gets developed and expressed depends largely on how people are led, managed and developed. For example, people may be willing, but not able, to do their job well, due to factors beyond their control. These factors are usually down to management, and the constraints and limitations of a less-than-excellent organisational culture.
Figure 1: Levels of potential
Since a business’s ability to solve problems, and to learn and adapt quickly and well, is central to excellence, helping people to develop and use their full range of talents in this way is key to developing organisational capability, and to the business’s capacity to continually adapt to new challenges and opportunities.
Unlocking untapped discretionary and excellence potential represents a tremendous opportunity to increase capacity, improve short-term results and build for the future
However, most organisations find themselves with significant underdeveloped reserves of excellence potential. The diagram below shows how the degree of engagement attained across a workforce reflects how well people are managed.
Figure 2: The engagement spectrum
The conclusion
Businesses whose management practices and culture do not actively foster engagement potentially have up to 85% of the workforce bringing less than their full capability to the role. (Many of whom will, if given the chance, respond to constructive efforts to engage them more fully.)
Conversely, unlocking the significant untapped discretionary and excellence potential represents a tremendous opportunity to increase capacity, improve short-term results and build for the future.
Questions to consider:
What is engagement worth to you?
What’s your strategy for unlocking discretionary and excellence potential?
Let’s get to work
Over 27 years of practice, we have developed a comprehensive, time-tested and field-proven business-improvement model and toolkit. We partner with ambitious businesses to identify strategic breakthrough opportunities in capability, performance and results, and we provide the tools, support, training and coaching to complement their existing expertise and help them achieve these.
If you’re aiming to build or optimise a business system using sound principles, values and standards to deliver consistently excellent and continuously improving results, we can help you develop and implement a strategy to accelerate progress and amplify the impact of your journey.
To get in touch, contact us here to book a free consultation.
Discover more of our tools and methodology in our book Toward Excellence.
