Business executive • MAY 11


Jason Wright discusses the road to success through


High performance habits


different emphasis on how we should develop and lead people. By putting more management focus on the process we can help people to achieve consistently high performance outcomes, sustained over a long period of time. In fact, by doing so, we can develop high performance habits. Just think for a minute about the impact to the bottom line in any business if everyone in the organisation constantly followed a process that meant high performance achievements were habitual. High performance habits are the key to unlocking high


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JAsOn WRiGHt is a senior manager working in the financial sector. He has wide experience in performance management and people development.


t could be said that the way we measure success has quite a lot to answer for. It is perhaps one of the main reasons why people can find it difficult to deliver consistently high


performance. High performance achievements tend to get reported as an


instant in time – the winner of a tournament, the fastest in a race, the salesperson of the year – all are photographed with medals, trophies, or certificates and interviewed in the moment of euphoria that is associated with their victory. At that precise point it is the outcome they have just achieved that is most important to them – and rightly so. It is absolutely appropriate to want to celebrate high performance achievements, and nobody would ever want to deny a successful person their “moment”. However the challenge presented here is that the


measurement of high performance tends to focus on outcomes. Those who observe this may find the outcome appealing, and may want to strive for the “trappings of success”. But what isn’t communicated is the process that highly successful people follow, often in the face of difficult circumstances, in order to reach their performance goals. Viewing high performance as a process places a very


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performance potential. The only way to develop high performance habits is to encourage people – or show them how – to focus on delivering the correct process consistently and trust that the outcomes will look after themselves. After all the end goal is often something that is too big to control in itself. For instance, the salesperson of the year mentioned earlier cannot actually control the outcome of the sales league table – there are simply too many variables, components and other people involved. However they can control their own inputs through the process they follow during the year – for example, the number of appointments they take, the way they deliver their pitch, the level of rigour they put around their follow up, how many hours they work and so on. Focusing on the process rather than the outcome helps us


to stay in control. We avoid distractions, and overcome disappointments that could otherwise derail our progress towards a successful outcome. Sometimes the ultimate result is a long way off; in the case of an Olympic athlete, their eventual goal could be four, or even eight years away. Remaining focused on the long term objective day in, day out, for a number of years is just too difficult. But by knowing what part of the training process needs to be completed successfully today, tomorrow, this week, and this month to make progressive steps along the way to an end-goal, makes it much easier to concentrate on, and deliver to, the required standard. Even in an everyday setting the point remains the same. There is another very good reason why process focus works


better than outcome focus. Very often an individual will not know how it feels to realise the outcome they are striving for. They have never achieved it before – but they can learn how the correct process feels, and begin to repeat that regularly. Repetition of the correct process will eventually convert it into a high performance habit. This is the real key to achieving new


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