I know what you’re thinking. “If I hear the phrase High-Performance one more time, I’m gonna throw up”. It’s a phrase we hear all the time in business, sport or any other environment where teams must work together to produce results. It’s starting to feel like all those other catchy phrases like “culture” and “analytics”; another phrase to attract attention or get a few more likes on social media.
But the High-Performance Model is more than a phrase. It is a method for producing change. It’s communal, non-biased, lacking prejudice, and feeds off collaborative energy. The High-Performance Model is built of highly skilled practitioners with highly diverse and unique skill sets, brought together for the purpose of solving a common problem or to achieve a common goal. Construct this model and place anything in the middle, reducing injuries in sport, solving childhood obesity, improving profits, or fixing the healthcare system. The problem or goal is irrelevant. The model is designed to create solutions. Those solutions come faster in the High-Performance model for several reasons.
The High-Performance Model is Agile
First, the High-Performance Model is agile. In life, the problems we aim to solve or the goals we aim to achieve will always involve a complex biological system. Those biological systems are dynamic and inherently present a moving target. To solve them, your method must be agile. The High-Performance Model meets these demands because it does not operate under titles. Titles are irrelevant. All that matters are roles and responsibilities. At any given time, it will be a team members turn to lead and the rest of the team’s role to support. The model is constructed to give way for the specialist in any given moment. They are expected to take the reins and apply their expertise until the dynamics shift and require a different specialist to take the lead. This allows the group to steer the ship quickly when the dynamics of the problem change. More importantly, it puts the person best suited to solve the problem in the driver’s seat.
The High-Performance Model is Highly Collaborative
Second, it is highly collaborative. It gains power as it increases its integration. Solutions are discussed as a committee, utilizing highly integrated data, with a specialist taking it all in while constructing a strategy. There are no silos, just a unified team utilizing the strength it has in its diversity. That diversity provides different perspectives because each team member has come to the table having followed different paths. So, solutions will always have the benefit of “outside of the box” thinking. It’s because of this collaboration, because of this influence from diverse backgrounds, that the group will often make the right decision, the first time, at each given moment.
The High-Performance Model Requires Excellent Leadership
Lastly, it is glued together by excellent leadership. The High-Performance Model requires a highly skilled performance manager. Someone whose specialty is more about building and leading great teams rather than possessing mastery of all the technical skill sets in each practical area. They are respected more for the moments when they do not speak rather than the moments when they do speak. They are more valuable for their ability to identify talent rather than their ability to demonstrate talent. They have greater value in their ability to get the best out of the team’s experts rather than try to be the best in a group of experts. They are more valuable for the questions they ask rather than the answers they provide. They spend more time paying attention to what is needed in the environment to keep relationships strong and keep the team functioning at a high level. Most importantly, they are decisive. They allow the group and the model to produce the solutions, but they are brave in making decisions.
Collectively, the High-Performance Model provides efficient agility that can adapt to highly dynamic environments to help an organization achieve goals and solve problems.
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