By 1981, it had become clear that a debilitating lack of talent was likely to create a ceiling for my baseball career well below the major leagues. So it was, after my sophomore year of college, that I needed to choose a major. Since I had worked part‐time at a commercial radio station – shout out to WCRA/WCRC FM in Effingham, Illinois—and the closed‐circuit radio station on the college campus at Eastern Illinois University, I decided that Mass Communications would make the most sense. Heck, I might well become a sportscaster, the next best thing to nabbing the first baseman position for the New York Mets (my original occupational aspiration). My guidance counselor concurred but offered one suggestion. Given that I had a highgrade point average and appeared to arrive at my academic major largely based on convenience rather than aptitude, she encouraged me to augment my Mass Comm major with a business administration minor. You know, just in case my sportscasting career went the way of my baseball career.

When my broadcasting career fizzled – turns out the guidance counselor was on to something – I found myself without a clear idea about my professional future. I bounced around for a year – a very interesting year that you really should ask me about if we are having a glass of wine together. Eventually, I ended up in Chicago and working in retail. About six months into a job as a customer service representative – a job that essentially meant that you got yelled at by angry people for 8 hours and then went home to a frozen dinner alone in a roach‐infested apartment (but I don't want to romanticize it), a position as a trainer opened up. My first job in human resources development was teaching new hires how to use the point of sale system at Marshall Field's. I loved it.

The job was hard. I led eight‐hour training sessions on highly repetitive tasks. It wasn't sexy, or fun. At least it wasn't for most people, but it was for me. I still remember meetings with other store trainers during the holiday season hiring blitz. They all had the same look: dead eyes, expressionless face, shuffling gate, garbled muttering under their breath that sounded vaguely like a countdown until Thanksgiving—the unofficial end date of the seasonal hiring. Not me, however. I couldn't wait to get up in front of a new class, memorize their names, beguile them with stories of how to navigate a credit card sale to be shipped out of state as a gift to a third party using an American Express card. Good times. I had found my passion.

Unfortunately, I became the epitome of the “Peter Principle” – Laurence Peter's observation that people tend to get promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. I find Laurence's observations a little constrictive. I think the Peter Principle is broader than reaching a level of incompetence. I think many people simply reach a level of disinterest. After over a decade of promotions within the field of human resources development, I had reached an executive level that was entirely about strategies, budgets, staffing, and litigation defense. The area of passion that ignited my career – training and education – was nary a part of my last corporate job. I knew I needed to realign my profession with my joy.

“FAT ENOUGH, HAPPY ENOUGH” ISN'T ENOUGH

In 1995, I left corporate America to pursue my muse: the Leadership Difference, Inc. Armed with a business plan and a passion for training and development, I envisioned myself providing high‐level leadership development to small‐ and medium‐sized companies that otherwise could not afford to have a full‐time staff member dedicated to this role. That vision has evolved over the years; now I spend more time delivering keynote speeches than seminars. But the 25 years since has given me a glimpse – sometimes more – into the vagaries that constitute “organizational culture.”

In 1995, the concept of corporate culture was just finding an audience in the business world. It had existed for around 30 years – largely as an academic construct – but had become more popular as an organizational development consideration in the 1980s and 1990s. It was still a bit of an enigma – one that continues to this day. What exactly is a “culture”? More importantly, what kind of culture drives peak performance? Finally, how do I create a peak performance culture?

That's the challenge.

As an aside, there is an important lesson in my own company's evolution. It began with a vision to be the training and development partner to other organizations. Providing education is my passion. That passion supplied the fuel to begin my organization, but that alone would not be enough to sustain it. Much of what follows in this book is a map for harnessing and directing passion in a way that will achieve success. Without passion, there can be no success; but passion without structure is a recipe for failure. I see that every day in business. That is an important thing to understand about a peak performance culture. Culture is not entirely conceptual. It requires that you combine concept with execution, principles with practices, vision with pragmatism.

Interestingly, it may not be the best organizations from which I have learned the most. Most of the companies and associations I have been exposed to do not apply the best practices outlined in this book. The truth is, even relatively successful organizations are plodding along, using processes that hamstring their success. It is a variation of the “no news is good news” mentality in that they have managed to do things just good enough to have success that is just good enough. Perhaps the better cliché is “fat and happy.” Or maybe “fat enough and happy enough.” But fat enough and happy enough do not allow you to achieve a peak performance culture.

For example, in preparation for a speaking engagement, I like to schedule a phone call with the key contact(s) to better understand their goals for the session. Minimally, I like to know the demographics of the audience and how they will benefit by and apply the concepts that I will be sharing. Optimally, I would like to integrate my content within the broader context of the conference at large or the strategies of the organization. This exercise is a version of “horizontal alignment,” a concept that will be explained later in the book. Peak performance culture requires broad vision, strategies, and ideologies designed to connect the needs of the market with the measures of organizational success.

Most of my clients are eager to provide at least a minimal amount of information for this purpose. Now, that sounds hopeful, but consider for a moment the fact that a significant percentage of my clients don't take the time to educate a guest speaker on information that will make the transfer of learning easier and enhance the likelihood of the attendees actually applying new and useful skills. That is a bit shocking to me. Add to that fact that only a handful of clients each year take the time to help me understand their current strategic approach, and how I can and should align with that during my presentation. I don't think this is an oversight of communication so much as a lack of clarity on that strategy. Many conferences don't have a clear purpose, desired outcomes, or even a theme.

I am not sharing that to shame anyone. People are busy. Conferences and training seminars are often constructed from checklists rather than strategic plans. Location determined, check. Agenda created, check. Invites sent, check. Speaker hired, check. Hotel rooms reserved, check. Our lives are quickly enveloped by activities – “things to do” lists that seduce us into thinking we are working hard to achieve success. I am a box to be checked. This approach results in tons of tasks, but little attention to the event's purpose. Much of this work rhythm is created by the lack of the strong infrastructure described in this book. These events are not supporting some broader approach to peak performance so much as they are an annual event that the organization schedules because, well, we did one last year. Peak performance cultures are not just horizontally aligned, but also vertically aligned. This means that all the tasks within the organization are being performed for reasons that can be tracked back to the company's core vision, strategy, and ideology.

For example, a recent client approached me to do strategic planning facilitation. The group represented a local chapter of a national organization that is well known and established. To successfully facilitate the construction of a new strategy, I felt it would be beneficial for me to understand past strategic plans, the process they used to achieve them, and the usefulness these past efforts had on actual results. To that end, I met with the organization's executive director.

Turns out, the organization had no strategic plan and had never had one. They had a generic mission statement that was rarely referenced when conducting business. They didn't clearly define their measures of success, other than not to spend more money than they had. Again, this is common. To the credit of this organization, the new executive director and board wanted to change that. They realized that to achieve a peak performance culture, they would need a vision and a strategy that resonated with their market and a clear articulation of success (horizontal alignment). They also knew that this strategic plan would illuminate several actionable items necessary to achieve these goals (vertical alignment). Combine these two with passion, and you have a good start on a peak performance culture.

Again, my point is not to pass judgment on the leadership of organizations but rather to reassure you that most organizations are not applying the best practices outlined in this book. Why? Because organizational culture, let alone a peak performance version, is challenging to define. That's actually very good news. If an organization can survive without attending to the key metrics of peak performance, imagine the level of success they can aspire to if they do focus on these metrics. The trap many of these organizations fall into is that without the fear created by failure, they are often uninterested in doing the hard work – the visionary and strategic work, not the daily activities that keep you busy – necessary to unleash their full potential.

Passion, horizontal alignment, and vertical alignment are not the whole of peak performance culture, however. A comprehensive exploration of organizational culture must include the customer experience – because it is far less important to examine what we think our culture is compared to what our clients think. The employee experience is equally important. And lest you, the reader, forget that my company is called the Leadership Difference, the behavior of an organization's leaders is paramount to creating a peak performance culture.

WHAT YOU'LL FIND IN THE BOOK

This book shares the metrics that I have discovered while working with thousands of organizations all over the world. My intent is to provide the reader – you – with a guide for organizational development excellence that you can use to evaluate your company's current state, aspire to a desired future state, and construct a strategy for moving from the former to the latter. Each chapter will introduce a key component to peak performance culture, provide a thorough definition of the component including examples and details related to it, and close with some key considerations for you as you evaluate your own situation relative to this metric.

To make the self‐assessment of your organizational culture easier, I have included an Peak Performance Culture Assessment. This tool can be used as a discussion starter with an executive team, an interview guide for discussions with a CEO, or a checklist for organizational development implementation. All in all, the process is akin to building a house with a foundation, framework, power sources, and inhabitants.

Few things in life are strictly sequential; the same is true of organizational development. Sure, it would be great if you could read the subsequent chapter, put the book down after completing that chapter, work on that metric, and then return to the book for the next step. Theoretically, if you are planning to begin a business, you might be able to execute on that approach. But the reality is that most readers will be trying to implement improvements during ongoing operations. That means the implementation will be more systemic than sequential. For that reason, I encourage the reader to consume the entire content of the book before assembling a plan for implementing ideas.

All organizations do some things well and other things poorly, just as a house may have good “bones” but poor aesthetics. It is exceptionally rare to find an organization that does everything at the highest level. I certainly haven't found such an organization during my career. Even if your company is succeeding – perhaps especially if your company is succeeding – it is important to understand why. That way you don't inadvertently change processes or ideologies that are critical to your success. Even successful organizations can reach an entirely new level of excellence by tightening up a few things.

I encourage you to read each chapter and then pause to reflect on the “key considerations” that are offered at the conclusion. These considerations are not all‐inclusive, so feel free to expand on ideas that the content sparked that are unrelated to either the “key considerations” or the Peak Performance Culture Assessment. Once you have documented your thoughts on how the content of that chapter impacts your own organization, you can then move on to the next chapter with a clean slate and clear focus on the next metric. By the time you have completed the book, you will have accumulated an immense number of actionable items that you will need to prioritize and distill into a plan of implementation.

THE PLAN REQUIRES WORK

In my experience, the momentum for organizational improvement is high during the initial parts of the project, but wanes as ideas and opinions give way to the minutia of actionable items. This book has the potential to generate robust and important discussion among executives about the opportunities to improve organizational performance.

The challenge to those responsible for facilitating these discussions and translating them into a meaningful improvement plan will be nudging executives past the big, broad, conceptual discussions and into the exploration of the policies, practices, and experiences that inform the transactions that define operational excellence and peak performance culture. There is no magic pill, mantra, or panacea that will emerge from this book. I wish I could offer that – I could retire. Rather, the value this book offers is a comprehensive template for evaluating the broad subjects that predict success. Beyond that, the hard work falls to you.

If you are working as a team to enhance the performance of your organization, I would recommend tackling each chapter independently, as each chapter could easily be a year‐long project. Use the “key considerations” to launch meaningful discussions with the group. This will lead you to identify priorities and tasks that need to be assigned. As I mentioned, no endeavor is strictly sequential, but I have tried to lay out the metrics in a linear perspective. Once you have completed the book, go back to the discussion topics that were generated by each chapter and give serious consideration to them, beginning with those in Chapter 2, then Chapter 3, then 4, and so on. Of course, there are exceptions, but generally this approach should work best.

***

As I read this, I am worried that I have already scared you about the path ahead. My bad. Organizational development is dense and never‐ending. But it is also gratifying. Stay focused on small but tangible enhancements and be mindful of making distinctions between activities and impact, lip service versus results. Celebrate each success, no matter how small. That's one of the things that I have noticed over these last 25 years. Peak performance cultures celebrate successes. Often. Be sure to do that.

Most of what you will read in this book are concepts that I learned through various forms of failure – trial and error, solving an existing problem (either in my own company or a client's), researching concepts of which I was ignorant. For that reason, I am most proud of this work. It is real. It is not academic in nature, although I learned some of the content in academic settings. It is practical, applicable, and proven. The ideas work. And they work for multinational companies, nonprofit associations, and the local business. They worked for me and they will work for you.

To address the three questions I posited earlier in this chapter:

• What is a culture? In my view, an organization's culture reflects how each team member behaves, executes, prioritizes, and delivers on its expressed vision, strategy, and core ideology as measured by its customers and employees. By this definition, every single organization has a culture. Most exist without intent. They have evolved over time and most do not promote peak performance.
• What kind of culture drives peak performance? Those with a clear vision, strategy, and ideology that resonates with the market and generates the results deemed most important by its stakeholders. This requires a rigid commitment to the practices that support these strategies, the creation of exceptional customer and employee experiences, and a passionate leadership approach that is rich with techniques that maximize communication and feed the intrinsic needs of the team. To accomplish such a culture, one needs intent.
• How do I create a peak performance culture? Through the hard work and intent described in the chapters that follow. There is no “easy button” for installing a peak performance culture. It requires effort, intent, and the roadmap contained in this book.

Back in 1995, I walked away from a successful corporate career to start my own company with a relatively worthless business plan and no clear understanding of the market for my services. I had a vague notion of my core ideology, but I didn't even know how much money I wanted to make or how to generate a profit and loss statement. Much of this book's content was a complete mystery to me at that time. I would likely have failed but for one attribute on which I built my success until I learned about and implemented the others. Fortunately, I was in possession of one very important attribute for creating a peak performance culture – the foundation. Passion. We'll go into more detail on that in Chapter 1.