KnowledgeBrief invited industry expert, Professor Colin Coulson-Thomas to speak at September's Strategic Outlook Dinner to lead a discussion focused on how to build a high performance organisation.
As competitive environments are shifting, a higher value is being placed on the high performance programmes. KnowledgeBrief invited industry expert, Professor Colin Coulson-Thomas to speak at September’s Strategic Outlook Dinner to lead a discussion focused on how to build a high performance organisation. We have shared some key insights from the evening below.
• Organisations bound by command and control systems are missing unprecedented opportunities to generate additional revenues by exploiting existing know-how and providing new knowledge-based offerings.
• The technical route to knowledge management – using hardware and software to capture and store knowledge – must be complemented by a people-centred approach that focuses on action learning, continuous improvement, and knowledge creation and sharing.
• However, managers also need to understand that knowledge is situational and context-specific. This is perhaps why many talent management programmes fail because some managers mistakenly believe that certain individuals are good at everything in all circumstances.
• Similarly, all employees have their own unique strengths and abilities, but a person’s talents can only be leveraged effectively in specific situations and under certain conditions. It is the job of managers to identify and develop these strengths and abilities (and future potential) and match them to the right contexts (tasks, projects, key workgroups, and environments).
• Most organisations have a small number of superstars who outperform the rest: firms need to identify the critical success factors for high performance and build these into processes and support tools for everyone in key workgroups to imitate. For instance, check lists that denote the actions and operations of star performers. This approach enables staff to perform difficult jobs, while offering simple, scalable and cost effective support
Participants included Virgin Atlantic, Balfour Beatty, RBS and Amey, amongst other KnowledgeBrief Management Innovation Programme members.
Next, this group will be discussing the Art of Innovation Leadership. For more information and to join, please contact us.