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Performance Improvement
Successful training managers know they must tie the programs they design and oversee to a performance outcome. Certain companies, all enormously successful, have taken the concept to a higher level, cultivating what is known in the business world as a performance culture. Companies including General Electric, Intel, Wal-Mart, and Dell all have as the crux of their business model the relentless pursuit of improved performance and results. At the heart of this effort, naturally, is human performance, on which you and your training staff can have a significant impact.
What is a performance culture? It's "an integrated set of management processes focused on extraordinary performance," says Dr. John Sullivan (www.drjohnsullivan.com), professor at San Francisco State University and noted strategic human resources thinker, speaker, and author, whose latest release is Rethinking Strategic HR: HR's Role in Building a Performance Culture (CCH, Chicago, 2004). What it's not is a corporate culture in the traditional sense, encompassing such things as values and beliefs.
It is, Sullivan continues, a "total culture that overemphasizes performance in every aspect ... a coordinated strategic effort to focus everything and everyone on results. If you want to dominate your industry, this is the approach to take."
Not a quick fix. In many organizations where bureaucracy and "seniority priority" are the rule, growing a performance culture will be difficult. Still, given that employers typically make their biggest dollar investment in personnel costs, your efforts to enhance employees' performance and productivity are sure to be welcomed.
If your organizational role includes both human resources and training, your influence will be even greater: A high-performance culture emphasizes talent management and performance rewards as well as rapid learning, team principles, problem-solving excellence, and individual accountability.
An all-or-nothing effort is not essential. The...