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Research Areas: Its about behaviours, (Stupid!).

Over the years we have researched various areas relating to our work on the
Management of Strategy, Performance and Change in organisations.

Our research areas follow the themes of "Strategy, People, Performance, Results". You can find out more about our recent research and its products, here.

Our latest research area is

The Culture of Performance: (Otherwise known as "It's about Behaviours, Stupid!")

Research

The purpose of this research is to understand how excellent managers are identifying, changing and developing the persistent, learnt, and socialised, culture and behaviours that support how performance is really managed in their organisations.  It is leading towards a book with a working title of “It’s about behaviours, stupid! Developing a Culture of Performance”.  

The most obvious way in which the performance of an organisation is managed is through objectives, measures, and targets, where meetings review progress, instigate projects, agree actions and ensure the actions are completed.  This assumes that measures motivate, what gets measured gets managed, and what has targets and incentives will be done first. 

You do have to have this basic discipline of performance.  It is necessary, but not sufficient.  In reality, far more subtle influences are at work: What I call the ‘culture of performance’.

The culture of performance embraces and governs the discipline of performance. It is a far more pervasive influence.  It can make the organisation a special place to be, or frustrate any attempt to change. 

It includes

• the behaviours that managers encourage,
• the expectations that are set,
• the boundaries of behaviour,
• the permissions to act and
• the stories of ‘how we work around here’. 

It includes the explicit and implicit messages that accompany day to day thinking and working.  This all creates learnt beliefs and behaviours. 

Where they are dysfunctional, it can be hard to identify how they were learnt. and how they can be changed, but some executives and managers do manage to create sustained, persistent and deeply learnt, behaviours. 

The question is: How do Executives explicitly create, re-educate, and change, this culture of performance? 

Status

This is current research. We are looking for Executives to interview who have:

1. Created an exceptional climate of performance in their organisation.
2. Implemented significant behavioural change, sustaining that change, to change performance.
3. Experienced significant external change that required changes to previous learnt behaviours.

If you think you qualify, please contact us

If you are interested in our research, also contact us

The research brief can be downloaded here

We give talks, seminars and briefings on various aspects of our research and work.
To get up to date with the latest thinking: Call Us.

If you are interested in improving how your organisation manages yout strategy and performance, talk to us