Is Your Organization High-Performing? Take Our FREE Performance Assessment

Every leader strives for a high-performing team, yet many find it difficult to pinpoint exactly where their operations are breaking down. At Lean East, we believe excellence isn’t a happy accident, it’s the result of a deliberate, structured process. We’ve distilled our proven methodology into the PERFORMANCE™ Process, a framework designed to align and improve your organization from the inside out. Learn about our process and take our FREE assessment to see where your organization stands and where you need to focus on improvement.

Lean East PERFORMANCE^™ Process – Strategic

The Lean East PERFORMANCE^™ Process is an acronym, with each letter of the word a step in the process. You should think about completing the steps of the process in order, with the initial goal to PERFORM.

• P is for Purpose. What is your reason for being? Your why? Your mission as an organization? Be sure to clarify and share this before moving forward.
• E is for your Ethics, also known as your Core Values. This is all about who you are as an organization. What are the values you wish to uphold at all costs? Both your purpose and ethics will help guide you as you set your vision for the future.
• R is for Reality. This is understanding your current state as an organization, including the good, the bad, and also the ugly. Many organizations skip a thorough review of their current situation, the business, the metrics, the opportunity, etc., and then struggle to arrive at a vision. This is because leaders see the current situation differently. The Lean East team uses operational assessments, process reviews, and SWOT analysis to help the team understand its reality.
• F is for Future. Once there is agreement on the current reality of the organization you can look at the vision for the future. Where does leadership want the organization to go? Lean East facilitates “visioning” exercises to help the team clarify their desired future.

Lean East PERFORMANCE^™ Process – Tactical

The initial steps in the PERFORMANCE^™ Process are strategic and visionary in nature. Once you have alignment on strategy, high-performing organizations need to shift to tactics.

• O is for Ownership. Who is going to lead the actions that take the organization from its current state into the future? Begin to break the vision into actions and then determine who is going to own the work.
• R is for Resolving and Restructuring. At this point in your work, you should know where you are headed and who needs to be in which seats to achieve the vision. It is likely you will see issues in your organizational structure and gaps in your team. You may even need to develop or hire new skills. Resolve these problems and get the right people in the right seats!
• M is for Measures. Finally, how will the organization know when the vision is achieved? You need to establish clear measures of success for the end goal – and intermediate steps – so the progress is clear.

Lean East PERFORMANCE^™ Process – Leadership

The remainder of the PERFORMANCE^™ Process is focused on leadership. Your ability to create synergy and maximize the output of the entire team is often the main ingredient that determines sustained success.

• A is for Accountability. After establishing ownership of tasks and completing any necessary restructuring, then establish expectations and use systems that hold your team accountable to the actions that will achieve the vision. Be ready to adjust your plan – you will learn things and want to make changes!
• N is for iNfluence and iNspire. Leaders must help the team achieve their vision. This requires many leadership skills – Lean East recommends the My Leadership Journey^™ training program to support this important work.
• C is for Communication. Keeping all employees informed about every step of the process is critical. Communication is one of the biggest complaints in most organizations and we help provide simple pull systems and tools that improve results.
• E is for Empowering. The final step in the process involves a key Lean principle of respect for people. The best organizations respect and also empower their employees. They achieve better results by having all levels of the organization understand the goals and know how to improve their processes to achieve better outcomes.

PERFORMANCE^™ Assessment Questions

The Lean East team has developed a streamlined diagnostic tool featuring simple assessment questions for every pillar of the PERFORMANCE^™ Process; from defining your Purpose and Ethics to ensuring you are Communicating effectively and Empowering your people.

Here are simple assessment questions for each section of the framework. Sign-up for our FREE Assessment and we will send you a PDF you can use to assess your organization in these areas based on the Kotter Survive to Thrive criteria from his book, Change: How Organizations Achieve Hard-to-Imagine Results in Uncertain and Volatile Times.

PERFORMANCE™ Area	Assessment Question
Purpose and Mission	Have we established a purpose & mission? Values?
Establish Ethics/Core Values	Does our team know them and live them?
Review the Current Reality	Is our team aligned on the current problems to solve?
Formalize the Future Vision	Have we agreed upon a vision for the next 2-3 years?
Obtain Ownership for Goals	Do we have an updated Strategic Action Plan?
Resolve Conflict/Restructure	Are the right people in the right seats?
Measures of Success	Do we have and share a dashboard of results?
Accountability Clarified	Do we have a performance review process that works?
INspire Improvement	Are employees actively trying to make improvements?
Communicate	Regularly scheduled organization-wide status meetings?
Empower	Do we trust our team or just tell people what to do?

Summary

Once you complete the FREE assessment we recommend you focus on improving any areas that you rated your team as only in survival mode. The strategic issues are easiest to address first, but fixing the tactical and leadership improvements are going to make a bigger impact. We encourage you to reach out to the Lean East team for assistance. An initial discussion is always complimentary.

Please leave your comments and questions below.