What drives organizational performance? It’s not what you think.

What exactly is organizational performance?

Organizational performance in today’s modern workforce is somewhat of a moving target.

Is it measured by hitting a sales and revenue goal?
Is it measured by employee engagement, productivity and turnover rate?
Is it measured by customer reviews on yelp or rate of company growth?

Are these the metrics that will help organizations to lead into the future?

Employee engagement, a thing of the past?

According to Adam Weinger, “Better engagement means better productivity. Corporations whose employees are engaged perform better than companies whose employees are not by over 200%. When employees are engaged at work, they feel a connection with the company. They believe that the work they’re doing is important and therefore work harder.”

But what if there was a new way to drive employee and organizational performance?

Engaging employees is great, but inspiring them to new levels of performance is even better. Employee engagement as a driver of organizational performance is simply not enough. In a world defined by constant change, an increasing speed of disruption and innovation, and the necessity for organizations to build agility and resilience as core competencies, employees need an entirely new source of motivation to produce results. We know, through our own research and that of others, like Oleynick, that inspiration-the work of inspiring employees and building an inspired leadership culture- is the resource organizations need to manage if they want to produce results.

Inspiration as a driver of organizational performance.

What we’ve learned from over 100 interview with leaders across industry, geography and gender, is that inspiration is not necessarily what we thought.  Instead of something that visits us without warning, inspiration is actually more like a muscle that can be developed and strengthened with deliberate practice. Learning to ignite inspiration in ourselves and others is what produces not just engagement, but bursts of invincibility and possibility that ignite creativity, innovation and even greater performance.  It’s engagement 2.0.

We dare companies to inspire because inspired people drive results.

Today, successful organizational performance demands making inspiring your people a core business strategy. In my next piece, I will share how you can start building an inspired performance culture beginning with individual leaders.