What Are the Characteristics of a High-Performance Organization?

Performance is an important part of innovation management. You need a way to tell if your organization is performing high, low, or somewhere in the middle. A high-performance organization possesses common traits that set it apart from the rest. Here are some of those characteristics and how you can benefit from them.

What is a high-performance organization?

A high-performance organization is one that gets better results than competitors through innovation and sales. Its business leaders are forward-thinking and constantly seek to improve their innovation strategy. More than 90% of employees are goal-driven top performers.

Characteristics of a high-performance organization

Becoming a high performer typically occurs over time and results in high profits and greater revenue. This also attracts repeat business. Satisfied customers keep returning and telling others about their experiences. How do you know if your organization rates you as a high performer? 

• A high-performance organization creates investment opportunities. New innovations that solve a problem or fulfill a need are seen as lucrative by investors.
• High performance leads to increased employee engagement. Team members who see the results of their hard work want to continue sharing ideas. When innovation is encouraged company-wide, employees feel their contributions are important and will be more likely to participate.
• A high-performance organization increases accountability. Employees are encouraged to take charge of projects and are proud of their work. They have excellent problem-solving skills, which help fulfill the needs of stakeholders.
• High-performing organizations include a diverse talent pool. This makes other creative individuals want to join and add to the growing pool.
• High performers have a solid innovation management plan in place. Employees understand the process and know how to contribute to the idea-sharing process.
• High-performing organizations experience operational breakthroughs that often become routine. These improve product delivery, productivity, safety, and scrap reduction.

How does an organization become a high performer?

• Invest in your leadership. Find managers who understand the importance of innovation management and know what it takes to lead a team to success.
• Recruit top talent. Hire employees who understand the industry, are customer-centric, and bring unique skills to the job.
• Create an innovation management process that will sustain high performance. Consider how your organization matches up with the competitors, and develop a strategy for maximizing returns.
• Create an innovation culture. Encourage idea sharing to ensure all employees are a part of the process. This will result in greater innovation opportunities over time.
• Use metrics to develop your innovation management strategy. Metrics allow you to track progress and assess overall performance. You can even break them down into smaller measurements to monitor individual areas.
• Invest in skill development. Encourage employees to keep learning and improving by gaining new skills. Accomplish this through targeted training and workshops.
• Regularly manage performance. Use metrics to make improvements and increase employee engagement.
• Build a team-based organization. Adopt cross-functional team structures to drive progress. A recent survey found 8% of organizations utilize teams company-wide, while 23% mostly use a hierarchical framework using teams.

Innovate with high performance in mind. This will increase customer trust and ensure you outperform the competitors far into the future.