Let’s face it. If there was a secret or a shortcut to achieving lasting business excellence — we’d all be doing it.

Sure, there are tons of great business improvement ideas out there – take your pick: “Good to Great“, “Covey’s 7 Habits”,“E-Myth”,“Built To Last”…..and hundreds more come out each year of others by best-selling business authors.

So why don’t organizations turn these ideas into action? More importantly - why don’t these great ideas last?

What’s missing?

Our research shows there are four required components that make up a complete strategy execution program:

• A holistic and repeatable business-building methodology
• Business coaching 
• Software to make it easy to learn and use every day
• A community of like-minded professionals sharing best-practices

BOTTOMLINE: Take out any ONE of these, and it just doesn’t LAST. It’s no secret! Time to take a look at a complete strategy execution program. 

Ever wonder why some organizations (businesses, not-for-profits, churches, etc.) just seem to perform better than others? Is it luck? Chance? More resources?

Our research has found there are five key differences – all of which are described in detail in the top-rated book Six Disciplines for Excellence.

Here are the top five key differences of top-performing organizations, in order of their importance:

1. Strength of the Leadership Team. Top-performing organizations rated 155% higher than the lower performers. The two primary factors were the ability of leadership to define a clear vision for the company, and the appropriate involvement of leadership in leading and supporting projects that were strategic to the organization.
2. Ability to Attract and Retain Quality People. Top-performing organizations rated 142% higher than the lower performers. The best small businesses have found that success in this area all starts with recruiting.
3. Disciplined Approach To Business. Top-performing organizations rated 114% higher than the lower performers. Top performers are also good planners, but are practical and are disciplined about the commitments they make.
4. Strategic Use of Technology. Top-performing organizations give more emphasis to using technology to impact the business in strategic ways (114% more) than the lower performers.
5. Effective Use of Trusted Relationships. Top-performing organizations rated 100% higher than the lower performers in their ability to utilize the expertise and talents of external organizations.

Other factors contribute to top-performing organizations and how they differ from lower performers (i.e., work ethic/attitude, teamwork, commitment, etc.). The five described above highlight the areas of greatest difference.

BOTTOMLINE:  Wan’t more in-depth analysis? Download our whitepaper “How The Best Differ From The Rest“.

A while back, Harvard’s Working Knowledge published the classic “Why Your Employees Are Losing Motivation.“

Their premise?

“Business literature is packed with advice about worker motivation—but sometimes managers are the problem, not the inspiration.”

Here are eight best-practices to fire up the troops.

1. Instill an inspiring purpose. A critical condition for employee enthusiasm is a clear, credible, and inspiring organizational purpose: in effect, a “reason for being” that translates for workers into a “reason for being there” that goes above and beyond money.
2. Provide recognition. Managers should be certain that all employee contributions, both large and small, are recognized.
3. Be an expediter for your employees. Incorporating a command-and-control style is a sure-fire path to demotivation.
4. Coach your employees for improvement. A major reason so many managers do not assist subordinates in improving their performance is, simply, that they don’t know how to do this without irritating or discouraging them.
5. Communicate fully. One of the most counterproductive rules in business is to distribute information on the basis of “need to know.”
6. Face up to poor performance. Identify and deal decisively with the 5 percent of your employees who don’t want to work.
7. Promote teamwork. Most work requires a team effort in order to be done effectively. Research shows repeatedly that the quality of a group’s efforts in areas such as problem solving is usually superior to that of individuals working on their own. In addition, most workers get a motivation boost from working in teams.
8. Listen and involve. Employees are a rich source of information about how to do a job and how to do it better.

Do you have what it takes to sustain the changes you make in your organization?

Organizational survival requires rapid adaptation to a changing environment. If survival is at stake, why is it so hard for us to implement change — and have it stick?  Why is there such a lag in our response to environmental changes?

For more than twenty years, the Pia Group has been studying organizations to find the answers to these questions and to identify successful paradigms for creating and leading change-capable organizations.

Not surprisingly, successful change that lasts – is a rarity.

Based on their research, the twelve requirements for lasting organizational change are:

1. A clear vision of your purpose and goal
2. Flexible thinking
3. Involvement and commitment
4. An empowering culture
5. Recognition of the human aspects of change
6. Antidotes to fear
7. Action – avoid paralysis by analysis and get started!
8. Effective communication
9. Talent management
10. Positive reinforcement
11. Meaningful metrics
12. Passion for the change

Rosa Say,  has an excellent post “Twelve Rules for Self-Leadership.“

Her wisdom based on years of experience and coaching result in this great advice for self-leadership:

1. Set goals for your life; not just for your job. What we think of as “meaning of life” goals affect your lifestyle outside of work too, and you get whole-life context, not just work-life, each feeding off the other.
2. Practice discretion constantly, and lead with the example of how your own good behavior does get great results. Otherwise, why should anyone follow you when you lead?
3. Take initiative. Volunteer to be first. Be daring, bold, brave and fearless, willing to fall down, fail, and get up again for another round. Starting with vulnerability has this amazing way of making us stronger when all is done.
4. Be humble and give away the credit. Going before others is only part of leading; you have to go with them too. Therefore, they’ve got to want you around!
5. Learn to love ideas and experiments. Turn them into pilot programs that preface impulsive decisions. Everything was impossible until the first person did it.
6. Live in wonder. Wonder why, and prize “Why not?” as your favorite question. Be insatiably curious, and question everything.
7. There are some things you don’t take liberty with no matter how innovative you are when you lead. For instance, to have integrity means to tell the truth. To be ethical is to do the right thing. These are not fuzzy concepts.
8. Believe that beauty exists in everything and in everyone, and then go about finding it. You’ll be amazed how little you have to invent and much is waiting to be displayed.
9. Actively reject pessimism and be an optimist. Say you have zero tolerance for negativity and self-fulfilling prophecies of doubt, and mean it.
10. Champion change. As the saying goes, those who do what they’ve always done, will get what they’ve always gotten. The only things they do get more of are apathy, complacency, and boredom.
11. Be a lifelong learner, and be a fanatic about it. Surround yourself with mentors and people smarter than you. Seek to be continually inspired by something, learning what your triggers are.
12. Care for and about people. Compassion and empathy become you, and keep you ever-connected to your humanity. People will choose you to lead them.

Creating Vision

In examining the relationship between corporate vision, individual purpose, and meaning, the ongoing task of executive leadership is to articulate and nurture a shared vision that engages individuals in order to bring out the best in people.

This doesn’t mean that vision creation is the sole responsibility of the CEO or even a small group of senior leaders. Many executives mistakenly think they must come up with “the vision” that others will automatically follow. However, the opposite is true. In fact, successful companies have found that the broader the participation in creating a vision, the greater the commitment people will have to it.

A simple adage to remember this concept is: people will support that which they help to create.

BOTTOMLINE: The cornerstone of a corporate vision is a clear image of how you will satisfy some important customer need. It is crucial that this image be created from what customers perceive to satisfy their needs not what you think will satisfy them. This requires individuals and organizations to interact extensively with their customers in order to perceive the world from the customers perspective.

“It must have been a slow mail day when the postcard for a Six Disciplines seminar landed on my desk. I’ve never been a big fan of consultants. I had been involved with TruFast since 1986 and became the firm’s CEO in 2002. As the leader of a company that manufactures roof fasteners, I knew we had guiding principles for the business and felt they would sustain us.

Yet the postcard for Six Disciplines hit when we were struggling to develop a new employee compensation program—one that would emphasize results and focus employees on working more efficiently. We had been putting 10 percent of TruFast’s pretax revenue into a pool to share with staff. At first, the plan seemed to work effectively, but then it turned into little more than a profit-sharing program. All employees were rewarded equally, which was not our original goal……”

Dan Bobinski is the CEO and director of the Center for Workplace Excellence. He’s been consulting on management and leadership issues for more than 18 years, working with the entire spectrum of business—from small regional concerns to companies in the Fortune 500.

Much of his work has been with leadership and management teams, enhancing and refining their thinking processes and tools to move them from surviving to thriving. Over the years, he’s honed his programs to provide the best and most essential components. After working with hundreds of businesses, he’s seen, heard, and read a lot. Simply put, Dan knows more than a thing or two about management, business improvement and excellence.

His overall impressions of Six Disciplines for Excellence?

“So with that background, Six Disciplines for Excellence has my full and complete endorsement. It’s probably the best book I’ve come across for building a sound and thriving business.”

“I’m very glad I was asked to read it–it’s awesome. Everyone in leadership should read it.”

“Perhaps it’s best to consider Six Disciplines for Excellence as a workbook (and it’s probably the best business-building workbook I’ve seen). In my opinion, many larger organizations would benefit from reading it, too. It’s not only easy to read, it outlines of the key steps for success that I taught for years in my management development programs—and more—all in a very well-organized fashion.”

“Read it and you’ll be enlightened.”

SUGGESTION: Haven’t yet read Six Disciplines for Excellence yet?  Get yours here. 

Dan Bobinski is the CEO and director of the Center for Workplace Excellence. He’s been consulting on management and leadership issues for more than 18 years, working with the entire spectrum of business—from small regional concerns to companies in the Fortune 500.

Much of his work has been with leadership and management teams, enhancing and refining their thinking processes and tools to move them from surviving to thriving. Over the years, he’s honed his programs to provide the best and most essential components. After working with hundreds of businesses, he’s seen, heard, and read a lot. Simply put, Dan knows more than a thing or two about management, business improvement and excellence.

His overall impressions of Six Disciplines for Excellence?

“So with that background, Six Disciplines for Excellence has my full and complete endorsement. It’s probably the best book I’ve come across for building a sound and thriving business.”

“I’m very glad I was asked to read it–it’s awesome. Everyone in leadership should read it.”

“Perhaps it’s best to consider Six Disciplines a workbook (and it’s probably the best business-building workbook I’ve seen). In my opinion, many larger organizations would benefit from reading it, too. It’s not only easy to read, it outlines of the key steps for success that I taught for years in my management development programs—and more—all in a very well-organized fashion.”

“Read it and you’ll be enlightened.”

When introducing any kind of business improvement process, companies go through an upheaval referred to as “organizational change.”

Organizational change is the execution of new processes or technologies intended to realign an organization with the changing demands of its business environment, or to capitalize on new business opportunities.

Here are some interesting facts about organizational change, from the research specialists at Prosci.

• The #1 contributor to organizational change success is active, strong and visible sponsorship throughout the project.
• The top obstacles to successful change are employee resistance at all levels: front-line, middle managers, senior managers, and inadequate senior management sponsorship.
• Employees want to hear messages about change from two people: the CEO and their immediate supervisor – and, the message they want to hear from each individual is very different.
• When asked what they would do differently next time, most teams would dedicate resources to change management.
• The top reason for employee resistance is a lack of awareness about the change, and what it means to them.

BOTTOMLINE: Most organizations say their most important assets are their people, but few behave as if this were true. Organizations don’t adapt to change; their people do. And the reason people resist change is because they like to have their expectations met and what they perceive as change often comes in the form of inconsistency.