Creating and sustaining SuperPerformance - Part II: the role of the CEO

November 9, 4:52 PMHouston Sustainable Business ExaminerBarbara Brown

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SuperPerformance starts at the top with the right business model. Do executives view your organization as a finely tuned race car or precision Swiss watch? At the start of the industrial revolution, the machines that built our modern world functioned only to the extent that their designers were able to build them as a closed system, insulated from the turbulence of the outside world. It’s not surprising that early industrialist modeled their businesses around the machines that were revolutionizing the world. They would craft and control the environment within their firm as carefully as they built their mechanical product.

As we entered the 20th century, physical science opened up new ways of looking at our world that began to deal with the open systems that make up the external universe. Biologists and meteorologists began to work with the science of chaotic, complex adaptive systems. Living systems, whether natural ecosystems or human created social systems cannot be modeled using classical Newtonian physics and calculus. It’s no wonder our strategic and financial analysts get it wrong. They should be using an “Organism View.”

In The Superperforming CEO, Dave Guerra proposes that “leadership and management come as a matched set… Superperformance unfailingly springs from the interaction of the two super-partners: process and culture.” The CEO must believe in the unlimited potential for transforming people by leading with service, inspiration and engagement. How does a leader activate that potential?
Dave suggests:

• View your organization as a complex living system
• Transform individuals, starting with yourself
• Share the wealth
• Engage the community and your customers as stakeholders
• Ensure all stakeholders win
• Let workers fulfill life’s purpose

For more information see: Creating and sustaining SuperPerformance - Part I
Creating and Sustaining SuperPerformance - Part III: A better leadership paradigm