High-Performance Work Culture

Build a high-performance culture by setting clear KPIs and targets, then give teams autonomy on how to reach them. Track progress daily in startups or quarterly in larger companies, and maintain morale with recognition, bonuses, and affirmation.
Chapters
Lets talk about how to cultivate a high performance work culture. I like a high performance work culture because I think we should all have a standard of excellence in what we do and take your own personal integrity and you know, level that you want to perform at in life. So I think the first thing to do is to track and measure everything. If you're not measuring something, it's hard to know how well you're doing. What is high performance? What does success look like? It's something that you're taught to ask in interviews. What does success look like in this role, in this job, in this company? How do you value high performance? So I think the first thing is to make it clear. Use something like KPIs use targets. Tell people what you're looking for so that you don't just give instructions in a blind way. This is the project. I'll see you in six months. How do they know if the project is going to go well or not? The scope, you know, it's about explaining this is what I expect from you. Make this much money, meet this many people, achieve this kind of environment in your work. So tracking and measuring is always the first step. Set the scene. When you have your team, you want to have them to have buy in on your vision. So you have to paint the picture. And I say this is one of the core things about leadership. Paint the picture of where we're trying to go. This is the vision, right? And then you have to give people the autonomy to reach that vision on their own. You've hired these people, you trust them as part of your team for a reason. So you have to be able to let them do their jobs and not micromanage them. So you have to make sure everyone understands the vision, they understand the goal. In six months, where do we want to be? Where do we want the business to be or the project or the culture or the team or the company? What are, what does success look like? And so everyone needs to understand that and then know where you are today and where you're trying to go. The example I like to use is when you use like Google Maps, it shows you where you are, you put the destination and then it shows you all the different routes you can take to get there. This one has more traffic. This one you have to pay a road toll. This one, the road is closed. So you have to let people use their own routes. But as long as we all get to the same destination at the same time, that is effective. So make sure you set the scene where we know today this is the situation. We're not making this much revenue. We have this many customer complaints every week. These are the goals that we're going to have over the next six months. This is what we want it to look like. And then give people the space to be creative about how they're going to get there, not to be on their case about everything. Every time, which I can understand is a temptation, but how is not as important as where you're trying to be. And so once they have the picture and the KPIs, it's about, about incentivizing and motivation. So I think words of affirmation are very important in all kinds of workspaces. You need to be able to appreciate people, praise them, congratulate them and be there for them. Because when things go wrong, everyone is very quick to blame, to scold, to fire, to give warnings. Those ones come easily. No one needs to be encouraged to do them. But I think as managers, a lot of the time people are not putting in enough effort to give people their flowers where they deserve it. Small things appreciate it, because people are doing their best every day. They are putting in the effort, they're doing what they can with the resources that they have. So I think words of affirmation and encouragement will always be helpful. And then there's many different ways to incentivize people. Whether it's with bonuses or with trips or with food or with employee of the month posters. You clap for them, you get a cake. I've seen so many different businesses and offices do things differently, depending on the resources you have available, the size of your team, what means more to them. Sometimes it's good to ask them, do you guys want pizza on a Friday or you want to go for team building once every three months? You know what I mean? So, so different things that keep the workplace also friendly and positive. Because when you're in a negative energy and everyone is feeling pushed and demoralized, it's very difficult to achieve anything. The vision now becomes unclear. People get caught up in petty, petty sights. But if you keep a positive morale in the workplace and people feel supported, people feel appreciated and they know what they're trying to do, they have the clarity of the goal. That's when you can start to see performance moving. And once you're tracking it, you can show them. Every three months we're appraising or like I know in such startups, you have your three metrics that you check every day. How many sales did we make today? How many customers did we convert today. How many people downloaded our app today? And you check it every day. So everyone is moving together in the measurement that we've all agreed as a team. These are the different components that can encourage to cultivate a high performance workplace.










