High Performing Organization: The Missing Element

We have made tremendous advances as humanity in the fields of science and technology. Yet, when it comes to managing people, we are not that different from the way the Egyptians built their pyramids or the Romans built their civilization, which is to own those we lead and use fear to get them to do what we want them to do. Today, that ownership comes in form of pay or salary which could be taken away if the employee failed to perform in a certain way or achieve expected results.

This has been recognized and acknowledged in the last few decades. Most business managers are intuitively aware that their employees are not performing at the level they are capable of performing. A Gallop study showed that a typical employee produces only about one-third of what she is capable of producing. Most employees will also admit that their work is primarily the means to pay the bills and little else. 

The High Performing Organization model does not address the fundamental reason behind low productivity and lack of employee engagement. For that reason, I believe it will fail to deliver its promise of high business performance and high employee engagement.

The central flaw of the High Performing Organization model is that, although it had the right intentions and the right motives, it continued to propagate the mindset that a human being is an automaton to be managed, like a machine. How did it do it? While the Scientific Management theories of the industrial age focused on the physical behavior of an employee and tried to control it, the High Performing organization model focused on and attempted to control the intellect of the employee. That's why most of the "organization change" initiatives start with a new concept, which is an intellectual model, and then try to get the employee to conform to that form of conceptual thinking.

The High Performance Model, as advertised, has been fundamentally flawed, just like the Scientific Management Theory of 1903 was. And the flaw is that, just like the Scientific Theory, it failed to see a human being as an integrated entity who is much more than her behavior and her intellect. 

The most important, the source or the root element in this model is Awareness. When the work of an employee, a team and an organization is rooted in their awareness, they accomplish what was never in their realm of possibilities. Then, and only then, we have a chance of attaining the promise of High Performance that has eluded the corporate world for centuries.