Strategic Planning
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strategic planning to build a performance culture

What is a performance culture? Dr. John Sullivan, author of Rethinking Strategic HR, defines a performance culture as follows:

A performance culture is unlike most corporate cultures in that it is a consciously planned culture that requires all to have a shared vision (with a focus on performance). Rather than evolving over time like most corporate cultures, is a deliberate effort by senior management and HR to ensure that every process, system and individual in the organization focuses on results and anything that runs counter to performance (effort, seniority that, time spent, good intentions, etc.) must be redesigned or eliminated. It's not a single "program" but instead a total culture that overemphasizes performance in every aspect.

A performance culture emphasizes results that are directly linked to the organization's mission and vision. In this way, agencies can measure their effectiveness by examining all activities and results through the prism of a performance culture framework. As a result, organizational features that do not contribute to effectiveness can be modified or deleted to remove all barriers and obstacles to performance.

Agencies must become more proactive, focused, and nimble. To accomplish this, five overarching principles must be employed:

  1. Government agencies should plan to achieve results. Agencies must employ strategic planning along with an annual monitoring system to track goal achievement and improvement in organizational performance.
  2. Government managers and supervisors must have flexibility to address workplace needs without restrictive rules and procedures that do not add value to the outcomes.
  3. Government management must focus more on that the measurable results the positively affect the citizens.
  4. Managers must redesign organizational structures and streamline processes with a focus on improving organizational performance or service delivery.
  5. Agencies should provide meaningful performance incentives.

In summary, agencies must place more emphasis on results rather than procedures, and rapid responses rather than on slow, rule-driven organizational behavior.

The first step in establishing a performance culture is to set and intentional organizational direction through strategic planning. A well-written strategic plan describes the activities that must be executed to achieve the organization's stated desired results. To accomplish this step, the organization must establish a performance culture in which results are the most important consideration — this must be the most important rule by which the organization operates.

Therefore, at the organizational level, the strategic plan is the constituting document for a performance culture. Without a strategic plan, there are no rules of engagement, no accountability expectations, and no results requirements. More specifically, a performance culture specifies that everyone must be accountable for helping to achieve the results. Every employee must feel personally responsible for achieving individual and group outcomes. There is no place for ineffective employees in a performance culture. As a result, the organization actively avoids hiring marginal people and instead concentrates on high potential and high performing candidates.

Once a performance culture has been established, the second step is to use the strategic plan to refocus everyone's efforts toward achieving the mission's results. Throughout the performance cycle, the organization's members should discuss their work in light of the strategic goals and direction, remaining conscious that they must constantly improve to achieve the stated results. Consequently, the strategic plan becomes a living document, a tool by which to sustain organizational improvement.

The third step requires the leadership who participated in the strategic planning process to remain highly visible in the organization. The management team must constantly reinforce the vision and demonstrate the effective behaviors at the leadership level so that others down in the organization understand how to behave in achieving the right results.

In summary, strategic planning is an important ingredient in creating and sustaining a performance culture.