Firm foundations for “High Performance with Ease”
What’s on your wish list?
As we approach the festive season and start to think about our plans for 2025, I wonder what’s on your wish list?
One long held wish of mine that I got to fulfil recently was to visit Japan. As a 30+ year student of what we refer to as “lean”, I’d always wanted to visit the source. Our study of what made Japanese car and electronics manufacturers (among others) so successful in entering the UK market on the 1970s and 80s has always inspired my journey, so visiting Japan was a chance to gain a deeper understanding through visiting organisations that truly demonstrate what I refer to as “high performance with ease”.
All of the companies we visited had highly engaged, enthusiastic employees and were:
providing great products and service to their customers (in one case with a defect rate of only 0.5 parts per million).
delivering above average profits (one with double the sector average).
achieving steady year–on–year growth even in these tough times.
I found the trip both hugely inspiring and also affirming of everything I believe about “high performance with ease”, as well as my practice with clients over the years. Not only that, it also added a huge richness and depth to my understanding of the “foundations” for this level of performance that can only enhance my consultancy, training and coaching. It has also provided me with some great examples to counter those who say to me, “That sounds like a great ideal, Harvey, but we could never achieve it in practice”. Yes, you can!
And what do we consistently see at the heart of this phenomenal performance?
In every case we heard a variation on the idea of “put people first”, then building a joined-up system that:
Links strategy to the activity of every team and individual.
Makes performance highly visible.
Involves everyone in identifying and acting on opportunities to improve.
If you’d like to learn more about how the insights from my Japan trip can help your business, I published my daily reflections on LinkedIn and have collated these into a pdf that I’d be delighted to send you – download a copy here or drop me an email and I’ll get it to you.