The topic of the moment seems to circle around how to build high performance cultures in today’s challenging business environment where performance is critical to individual and team success.  When I’m working with clients, this is one of their main concerns: how to drive success and achieve KPIs and quarterly targets while maintaining a culture of development and growth.  In a competitive, complex, and volatile business environment, companies need more from their employees than ever. But the same forces rocking businesses are also overwhelming employees, driving up their fear, and compromising their capacity.

One of the most insightful books I’ve read recently is by Tony Schwartz, the author of ‘The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working’.  This is a fascinating take on this topic of how building a culture focused on performance may not be the best, healthiest, or most sustainable way to fuel results. Instead, it may be more effective to focus on creating a culture of growth which requires a blend of individual and organizational components: an environment that feels safe, a focus on continuous learning, time-limited experiments, and continuous feedback.

For more on this, have a look at his TED Talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smrMWv5rcCo or check out his insightful book.