High Performing Organization: The Missing Element

by Bhavesh

A high performing organization consists of highly productive people who are deeply engaged with their work. This article examines the importance of awareness in such organizations.

Today's Corporate Work Environment

In your view, what's the emotional predisposition of the majority of corporate workers?

What’s Wrong with Our Work?

Why it is important to consider a high performing work environment

We have made tremendous advances as humanity in the fields of science and technology. Yet, when itWork and High Performance 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.

What is a High Performing Organization?

How familiar are you with the concept of a High Performing Organization?
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A high performing organization is a an organization where its people are highly engaged with and produce at very high efficiency.

The Rise, the Fall and the Rise Again

Of High Performing Organization

In the last 30 years or so, some scholars, mostly intellectuals and academics who started out on university campuses and later became consultants to Fortune 500 companies, proposed that the roots of these problems were in the scientific management model developed by Frederick Taylor in 1903. The early 1900′s were the time of industrial revolution. So Frederick Taylor’s theories viewed businesses as machines and people as their machine parts. This view of workers as machine-parts continued even though the nature of business became information-based, not product-based, and our work became knowledge-based, not labor-based.

A theoretical model was proposed, loosely termed High Performing Organization, and gained momentum through mid-1900′s. After around 1995 it fizzled, like many management theories do after they go around as the “flavor of the month” (flavor of the decade in this case).

Lately, the High Performance model of business management has regained some of its popularity, perhaps because the managers are still looking for ways to figure out why their employees are not as engaged as they ought to be and their productivity not as high as it could be.

Will it be different this time around? Will the concept of High Performing Organization finally hold its sway as a useful tool for management or will it fail to deliver its promise once again?

High Performing Teams and Organizations

On Wikipedia
High-performance teams is a concept within organisation development referring to teams, organizations, or virtual groups that are highly focused on their goals and that achieve superior business results. High-performance teams outperform all other similar teams and they outperform ...

What Do You Think?

What's the best way to make people's work engaging and exhilarating?
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Stimulate their intellectual faculty.
jen on 11/14/2015

Stimulate curiosity.

What's Missing in the High Performing Organization Model

A Promise that Can't be Delivered

The_Missing_ElementThe 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 High Performing Organization movement failed to deliver what it promised, which is to see human beings as more than fragmented machine-parts. 

A Better Way to Achieve High Performance

Management by the Way of Awareness

Based on studies, in-the-field practice and trial-and-error, I have organized seven human faculties that are at play in any human being. These faculties are not my invention, however. All I have done is made them applicable to today's business environment. They have been around for thousands of years. In fact, some ancient teachers recognized many more than these 7 faculties. The 7 that I propose form a simple enough model to be able to teach,  learn and apply without making it overly simplistic. This model, called Awayre Layers, views a human being as a human being, not as a fragmented “thing” with machine parts and forms the central piece of the management practice I call Management by the Way of Awareness.

These 7 faculties are:

  1. Inspiration Point, Awareness
  2. Personal Identity
  3. Inherent Talents, Values and Wisdom
  4. Intellect
  5. Emotions
  6. Organic Energy
  7. Actions and Behaviors

When these seven human dimensions are addressed and aligned, people become naturally engaged to their work and produce with effortless and exhilarating efficiency.

Importance of Awareness in High Performing Organizations

The Missing Element

AwarenessThe 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.

Resources for Creating a High Performing Organization

Training Programs for High Performing Organizations
These training programs help you align your people and processes to the intended results for your business or organization. They consist of training and development programs, individual and group coaching, curriculum development for your internal training use and train-the-trainer programs for your trainers, leaders and executives.

Activate the Hidden Power of an Organizational Process
Awayre, LLC specializes in activating the hidden power of a business process by engaging its people's awareness. In so doing, it brings to business management its most important ingredient, which has been absent in the last 5000 years, human awareness.

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Further Study on Awareness

Books on Human Awareness
A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61)

With his bestselling spiritual guide The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle inspired millions of readers to discover the freedom and joy of a life lived "in the now." In A New Earth, ...

The Sedona Method: Your Key to Lasting Happiness, Success, Peace and Emotional Well-Being

Foreword by Jack Canfield: I have been hearing wonderful things about the Sedona Method® from clients and friends for about 20 years. Recently, I finally took the course with ...

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life

Out of nowhere, like a fresh breeze in a marketplace crowded with advice on what to believe, comes Byron Katie and what she calls “The Work.” In the midst of a normal life, ...

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High Performing Organization: By the Way of Awareness

Applications and Perspectives in Business Performance, Sales and Human Growth and Development

Management by the Way of Awareness
For centuries, businesses have ignored the most crucial element in management of its people: human awareness. Management by the Way of Awareness brings this missing element to business management in a systemic and a fundamental way.

Sales Problems and Solutions
Businesses today need fresh ideas for bringing in sales and revenues. Rooted in Selling by the Way of Awareness, this article brings you many non-traditional solutions to some of the most recurring sales problems.

What You Thought Your Business Would Be
If you own your own business, perhaps you remember the time when you started it. Perhaps you also remember that at that time, you had a vision of how you wanted it to turn out. Looking back, may be you realize that your business is a little less than what you thought it would be. This article discusses why most businesses fail and what can be done to improve its chances of success.

Satori Quotes: An Insight into Nothingness
At the heart of any organization's attempt to become high performing lies the notion of development and growth. However, traditional approach to learning involves intellectual concepts and collecting of information. True learning happens when we gain an insight into the nature of things that's beyond mind, intellect and the stuff we have collected in it. Satori Quotes allows you to experience such moments of refreshing insights through a collection of quotes and sayings.

More on Organizational Development

And Awareness-Based Business Management
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Updated: 05/12/2020, Bhavesh
 
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Bhavesh on 11/16/2011

clouda9, I plan to write more on the topic to cover its different aspects. It would be an interesting project to write a case study, perhaps, to apply the principles of High Performing Teams to an online team and to other similar scenarios. Thank you for your thoughts.


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