Is your organization high-performing?  This was the question asked by Susan Annunzio, in the most comprehensive study of knowledge workers ever conducted.  Annunzio is CEO of The Center for High Performance and was a recent guest of Inside the Taleo Talent Studio where she detailed the results of this study and insights from her book, Contagious Success: Spreading High Performance Throughout Your Organization.

Inside the Taleo Talent Studio is a live video interview program filmed in front of a studio audience. This episode was filmed on Tuesday, September 27 (watch recording), and was hosted by Pamela Stroko, Taleo Talent Management Expert and Evangelist. Using a format similar to the popular program Inside the Actors Studio, Pamela asked Susan probing questions on the topic of what makes organizations high performing. Together these two experts shared their knowledge of the critical elements necessary for teams to perform at the highest levels. Also included was an engaging Q&A, where both Stroko and Annunzio responded to questions from the studio audience and those watching live online.

I found Annunzio’s insights to be quite compelling, with a few highlights including:

• “Productivity doesn’t equal performance. Productivity plus creativity — when people are allowed to use their brains — that equals performance.”
• “If you want Return On Investment, you have to get return on brainpower.”
• “In order to be competitive today, you have to be operationally efficient. Companies have to look at what it costs to run their businesses. But they have to understand that there is a huge difference between cutting muscle and cutting fat. What are the things that drive motivation, that drive success? Companies need to ask: Are we becoming operationally efficient, or are we cutting our way to death instead of success?”
• “If you want Return On Investment, it’s really important to understand: does your environment create an atmosphere where people are allowed to think? Because if it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter how smart they are; and in fact, the smarter they are, the less they are able to think, the lower the likelihood they are going to stay long-term.”

Annunzio didn’t pull any punches either. In response to an audience question, and after apologizing to any HR leaders in attendance, she said “Sadly, my experience is that most HR people manage compliance, and are keepers of the past. And that is sad to me. I think that the number one responsibility of an HR person is to understand what are the behaviors our organization needs to execute our strategy, and that HR people should be the champions of those behaviors. And they need to be the conscience to the CEO and their team. Is that team emulating the behaviors that drive high performance? Are they unintentionally and inadvertently rewarding behaviors that don’t drive success? … If you want to be great you need to be consciously aware of what you are doing right, and do more of it, and make sure you are rewarding it in your workforce.”

For more insights on topic, see also Pamela Stroko’s recent blog post at the ERE Community site, “Is Your Organization High-Performing?” Stroko first describes the significant gap that exists between people who think they work in high-performing groups or for high-performing organizations, and those that actually do so based on the evidence. She notes that one reason for this is a common confusion of activity for results. She then provides five best practices on how to become a high-performing organization: go beyond the short term; focus on the environment, not the leader; build talent from within; move the middle; and engage employees in problem solving. Read her posting for great insights on each of these best practices.