Let’s talk about elite performance today.
Every business leader or business owner knows that running a successful business is really hard. It is a competitive endeavor of the highest order. The things required to build, grow, and sustain a successful business is a long list. There are hard choices and performance requirements that pop up every day, week, month, quarter and year. The performance challenges are constant and significant.
So, in order to succeed in such a highly competitive endeavor, business leaders and owners need to think not only about the goods and services they sell. They also need to think about how to create an organization that can perform at a high level over an extended period of time. Business success is not about “one hit wonders” of isolated performance. Business success is about sustained performance.
If you look closely at the way any elite athlete, in any sport, prepares for their performance, you will see the concept of “repeatable process” prevalent and prominent in their approach. Successful athletes almost always are the ones who prepare the best. And “preparing the best” means they are the ones who have broken their sport down into its integral component parts. They have isolated the key moves or techniques that they need to execute successfully, and they work on those moves or techniques over and over and over and over and over… until they are sharp as a razor’s edge.
If you take a close look at the way elite performing artists (singers, actors, dancers) prepare and perform you will see the same approach. The actor does not practice the full play, beginning to end, every time. They break it down into scenes, and work on perfecting each scene. The pianist does the same thing. The dancer as well.
And if you look at the way successful organizations institutionalize manufacturing, operations, or organizational behaviors, you will also see the same idea, in the form of “standard work.” The organizations that can successfully create standard work across the enterprise, tend to get much tighter quality control, and much more consistent customer experiences, among many other benefits.
In other words, elite performers of any stripe all create their elite performance essentially the same way — by creating a repeatable process of standard work that they, and everyone on their team, can understand, practice and perfect.
This concept comes up in every workshop we teach and with everyone we coach. The people and the organizations who tend to get heard in this noisy world are the ones who make their communication a priority, and break their communication efforts down into the component parts. The people most likely to be heard are the ones who think and act like elite athletes or elite performing artists, who create repeatable performance through repeatable preparation.
That’s the way we think about communication here at The Latimer Group. And that’s the way you should also. You want to be heard? Then break your communication preparation down into its components, and we believe there are four: assess the situation, build the message plan, translate the message into a document, and deliver the message effectively. And when we break it down this way, and map out a repeatable process of preparation, we are much more likely to get repeatable performance.
Good luck and have a great day.
Does your team:
– Take too long to make decision?
– Fail to ask for what it wants or needs from you?
– Make things too complicated?
– Deliver unconvincing or disorganized presentations?
– Have new hires who are unprepared to communicate in the workplace?
We transform teams and individuals with repeatable toolsets for persuasive communication.
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