“What was most useful is that Kate created a safe space for us to have the tough discussions.  There was a synergy with people coming forward.”

~  Participants at a retreat in Colorado

Champion Leaders’ Performance Programs—the same ones used by Unilever, Heineken, Allstate Insurance and the US Air Force—are 6-12 month custom designed programs for both C-level and senior level executives tailored to specific objectives, issues and challenges and to help you triumph over obstacles and propel your business forward. Programs are designed to reduce stress, resolve conflicts, build trust, strengthen relationships and create synergy to produce winning performance that boosts morale, enhances customer satisfaction and improves the bottom line.

Bridging the Gap Between Strategy and PERFORMANCE

It's vital that businesses today look for ways to drive profitability. Having a solid strategy that delivers results is paramount. Yet too many strategic plans end up on the CEO's shelf, collecting dust.  That leaves the CEO navigating the future without the all-important buy-in of their top team. Companies today face higher and higher challenges to achieve returns on their strategic investments.

According to authors Michael C. Mankins and Richard Steele in their Harvard Business Review Article, “Turning Great Strategy into Great Performance”, companies average only 63% of the objectives their strategic plans promise. 

Where’s the gap?  What gets in the way?

The key issues are how well the team communicates, aligns around top initiatives, creates short term and long term plans, and holds each other accountable to deliver the results.  

What’s amazing is that most leaders know this, yet lack the know-how or ongoing discipline to develop the culture to ensure these issues are addressed each and every day. Many executives refer to these things as the "soft skills" because they don't think they are measurable or quantifiable. Yet, research uncovers these "soft skills" as the biggest levers to directly impact the strategy to performance gap.

The great news is that our clients using our Best Year Yet® system are addressing the gap and enabling their leadership teams to significantly "attack the gap":

• Clearly devise and communicate strategy and accountabilities—who is on the hook for what?

• Align leaders around top goals and initiatives and ensure collaboration occurs to achieve the stated results—everyone going in the same direction for a shared set of goals and not for individual gain

• Measure and monitor performance each and every month to ensure progress continues to move at desired levels—progressive results-driven meetings without room for a lot of excuses

Our program is designed to resolve the strategy-to-gap performance issues in your company:

• Performance is tracked against the top annual priorities

• Results meet projections

• Communication and follow-through are guaranteed

• Top management can spot bottlenecks and course-correct to ensure desired results

• Individual and team focus on the delivery of the vital few automatically generates an accountability and performance culture

How would reducing the strategy-to-performance gap transform your organization?

The Total Team

Interruptions, disruptions and the hectic game of coping with unpredictability and lightening-fast change is accelerating.  Now, more than The journey to high performance is ongoing. It's rare that a team achieves high-performance and just stays there. 

What does it take to transform a team into a focused, aligned, accountable unit?

• Shared purpose and direction. We generate teams that are aligned.  Mental and emotional power are focused on one direction.  Where there's alignment on a plan, there is power and strength and a shared ability to make things happen and move forward.
   

• Motivating goals that drive to results. The major focus of our work is results--what you know must happen in order to succeed. Less than 50% of people do what they say they'll do.  High performing teams are ones that keep their word to each other.  A say/do ratio of 80% is necessary to becoming a high performing team.
   

• Commitment to individual and collective roles.  High performing teams have members who take  personal responsibility for their individual performance and behavior and expandi that to the perspective of the entire team. They become holistic leaders to create and environment in which positive change happens and results are produced.
   

• Many-to-many interaction. Our system creates an environment of accountability. Team members are often unaware of each other's actions and performance remains obscured.  What makes our Best Year Yet® system so powerful is that it reveals performance--it makes team members accountable not only to their boss, but also to each other.  It shifts the culture from one based on one-to-one interaction (manager and direct reports) to one based on many-to-many interactions.
   

• Timely and effective response to disruptions. Change is the name of the game today. It's not enough to think your way to right action, high-performing teams act their way to right thinking. Our skilled facilitation and on-line training tools enable individuals and teams to become the architects of their own future.  Monthly planning, tracking and producing results are the building blocks.
   

• Reliance on diverse talents.  Savvy teams pay attention to helping each other understand and maximize their unique strengths to the benefit of the individual and the team.  They appreciate style differences, natural gifts and personal experience. They extract and exploit the ideas of all team members to make better decisions and solve problems quickly.
   

• Mutual support and trust.  Trust is the confidence among team members that their peers' intentions are good and that there is not reason to be protective or careful around the group. Most people learn to be competitive with their peers and protective of their reputations.  It is a challenge for them to turn those instincts off for the good of the team, but that is exactly what is required. Our skilled facilitators create an environment where team members share experiences over time, create multiple instances of follow-through and credibility, and learn an in-depth understanding of the unique attributes of team members.

The results you want and need (how we work)

Our Best Year Yet® system is the foundation in the Leadership and Possibility Program and offers these benefits to breakthrough results:

• reach a new level of leadership, productivity and personal power with a possibility focus on where you want to go and where your future lies;

• break down silos and collaborate across teams;

• expand control and reduce stress because people are self-directed, set their own objectives and hold themselves accountable, increasing the span that an executive can effectively manage

• focus meeting agendas and conversations on organizational goals and progress toward achieving those goals

• expand your field of vision, highlighting problems so people spend less time hunting for them and more time solving them

• stop blaming and reacting to others and lead the transformation of your team, department or organization;

• move past just working hard to aligning on and producing significant results;

• put your time and efforts into the high leverage activities that catapult results and increase the bottom line

How ready are you to enable your teams, departments or organization to become naturally high performers? 
 

If you are serious about moving forward in your life and business, we'd be happy to talk with you and give you a sense of what's possible, so you can make up your own mind.  Contact us for a free consultation