Are you winning the rat race?

“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you‘re still a rat.”

Lily Tomlin

Every day is a contest.  We compete for increasing market share, advancing our position, receiving the recognition we deserve, the customers we need and the respect we long for.  But how do we measure our success?  Is there a finish line or benchmark?  Do all stakeholders agree on the metrics?

When Vineet Nayar took the helm of HCLT his greatest challenge was not their failures but their successes.  How do you convince 30,000 employees they could be better if they are already growing at 30%?

The solution could not come from those who had run the race before.  The field of competition is entirely different now for all of us.  The solution must come from those that are in the race alongside us right now.

Given this same dilemma most CEOs would convene a meeting of senior management, share their relative growth to competition and create a top down push to greater performance.   Mr. Nayar did not become one of the most highly regarded leaders in the world by doing what others do.

Vineet realized that “relative performance” insights needed to happen at all levels of the organization.  Everybody not only needed to know how they were doing in comparison to their peers, and to have the opportunity to not just be better than the competition but to change the contest entirely.   He changed the entire field of play by inviting everyone to join the contest.  No one was excluded, no ideas were censored, no hierarchies were protected and no opportunity was ignored.

He realized that growth and innovation cannot be pushed from above but must be inspired from within.  The drive to excel is not found in a vacuum or promoted from a position.  We may be inspired by leaders, trained by coaches, but we are powered by our peers.  Outsiders can energize us, but we are shaped by our insiders.

It is the people who experience our same challenges, live with our same frustrations, are confined by the same limitations that show us what is really possible.  We can ignore the advice of experts, mock our leaders, but we cannot escape the truth of seeing people just like us, who with the same resources just do better.  These are our real leaders.

They are not those empowered by their positions but in-powered by their accomplishments.  They lead by example, thrive where they are appreciated and raise the level of performance for everyone they touch.

These are also the first people to leave in cultures where position is valued over performance, truth is defined by politics and hierarchy is a hiding place.

Peer Powered Performance™ is a practical system for engaging energy, creativity and resilience from every level of the organization. It is a process that brings out the best in value-adding team members while simultaneously dis-empowering those who, in the absence of transparent accountability, are allowed to bully and manipulate draining invaluable energy and resources.

1-Do you have a place where team members are encouraged to connect, share, learn, and collaborate?

2-Do you provide scheduled follow up to training that encourages team members to practice new skills, share their successes and learn from their failures?

3-Do you have a system to consistently share best-in-class resources from world-class leaders inspiring break trough’s in the myopia inherent in any internal preoccupation?

4-How do you teach and reinforce Emotional Intelligence and Affective Leadership skills proven to be the most important leadership skills of all and yet are effectively unteachable in short term training?

5-How do your team members share creative new ideas without fear of retribution or recrimination?

6-Are you using nonthreatening humor and imagery to encourage team members to focus on help-full, energizing ideas?

7-How do you counteract your team’s hard wired focus on fear?

8-Do you create powerful energizing awareness with consistent education and provocative illustration?

9-Is there a resource that is specifically created to provide an energizing inoculation of awareness to all team members at exactly the same time?