Last time, we looked at unlocking human potential. Today, we’ll go a step further and explore what it takes to build a culture with excellent people management.
A culture with excellent people management emerges when an organisation consistently reinforces a set of behaviours, systems and leadership practices that help people perform at their best.
Here are nine components that are key to doing this well:
- Clear and positive purpose
The strongest cultures are built around an explicit aspiration to be great to buy from, work for and invest in. - Clear standards and expectations
Excellence requires high standards and a shared understanding of what good looks like. People need to:- Commit to high standards
- Take responsibility for their attitude, performance and development
- Learn from successes and setbacks
- Remain open to feedback and challenge
- Continuously pursue better ways of working
- Effective goal-setting
People engage when goals are:- Derived from a credible strategy
- Ambitious but achievable
- Supported by effective management
- Constructive accountability
Excellent organisations review performance in a way that is:- Regular, structured and systematic
- Fact-based rather than emotion-driven
- Focused on learning, not blame
- Optimally balanced between challenge and support
Miscommunication, mistrust and unresolved conflict can undermine performance just as profoundly as poor systems. Leaders and teams need the skills to tackle these issues openly and constructively
- Removing fear
Continuous improvement depends on people flagging up problems and spotting opportunities. That only happens when people trust that they won’t be ignored, dismissed, blamed or left to solve issues without support. - Open and honest dialogue
Constructive challenge is an essential part of excellence. Organisations should create an environment where people can:- Identify and address solvable problems
- Deal professionally with unavoidable problems
- Professionally and respectfully resolve conflict and disagreements
- Address relationship and communication issues
Many problems are social rather than technical. Miscommunication, mistrust and unresolved conflict can undermine performance just as profoundly as poor systems. Leaders and teams need the skills to tackle these issues openly and constructively. - Relentless commitment to continuous improvement and value-enabling time
If improvement activities are routinely cancelled, rushed or deprioritised, people quickly conclude they are not important. Excellence requires dedicated time for:- Performance reviews
- Problem-solving
- Learning
- Innovation
- Process improvement
- Manage underperformance
A culture of excellence should be supportive and developmental, but it must also maintain clear minimum standards. Managers have a responsibility to address:- Persistent underperformance
- Counterproductive behaviours
- Attitudes that damage team effectiveness
Questions to consider:
Which of these does your culture excel at?
What’s the biggest improvement opportunity? And how do you intend to address it?
Let’s get to work
Over 28 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.
