Page 155 - HBR Leader's Handbook: Make an Impact, Inspire Your Organization, and Get to the Next Level

144 HBR Leader’s Handbook

In their HBR article “Three Steps to a High-Performance Culture,”
Carolyn Dewar and Scott Keller describe a similar process at ANZ bank
that also took several years. In their situation, executives took three key
steps to change the culture that are similar to those we outlined in
chapter 3. First, the ANZ executives explicitly stated what they wanted
the high-performance culture to look like—that it would be character-
ized by alignment around vision, execution of goals, and continuous im-
provement beyond competitors’ performance levels. They also created
metrics to gauge progress on all three of these imperatives. Second, ANZ
focused on a few key cultural attributes (such as customer focus) to
reinforce every twelve to eighteen months instead of trying to change
everything. And finally, ANZ integrated work on cultural issues into its
business initiatives instead of dealing with them separately. The result of
all this work was a significant rise in productivity per employee and other
key performance metrics—all of which were sustained for ten years.
Think about your own team or department. To what extent is a high-
performance culture already in place? If it is, what steps can you take to
reinforce and sustain it? And if not, what can you do to move your culture
in the direction of high performance?

Questions to consider

■ Stretch goals. What goals could your team reach for that would make your
customers and your senior leaders take notice? How high can you raise the
bar?

■ Accountability. What consequences have you set if members of your team
do not achieve their goals? Do they truly feel like they must achieve the
goals you set for them?

■ Reducing complexity. How can you make it easier for people on your
team to get things done? Can you run interference for them with other