Insync’s executive chairman, Nicholas Barnett, has published a book based on ground-breaking research involving the views of over 100,000 employees from around 200 companies: 7 Business Habits That Drive High Performance. It identifies 7 crucial habits that differentiate high performance organisations from low performance organisations.
In the book’s foreword, Dr Brian McNamee AO, former CEO and Managing Director of CSL said:
“As business leaders, we spend an enormous amount of time, money and effort discussing, debating and formulating our strategies and planning our major projects. It’s probably fair to say that we do not spend enough time discussing, debating and developing plans to change our organisational habits and culture that have such a large bearing on whether our strategy will be executed successfully. This book sets out a simple framework for CEOs and their executive teams to use to ensure that they are practising the right business habits and creating the right cultures to drive high performance.”
The underlying message is that boards, CEOs, executive teams and their organisations all have within them the power to substantially lift their performance. They essentially need to focus on how they deal with the biggest and most valuable asset within their organisation – their employees. But, while every organisation is capable of lifting its performance, 7 business habits is not a smorgasbord from which leaders choose the habits they like, nor can they just try the 7 habits for a season. All 7 habits are interrelated and the full benefits of driving sustainable high performance will only be achieved by commencing the journey of implementing them all and then continuing to raise the bar.
The 7 Business Habits are:
- Live an inspiring vision
- Communicate clear strategies and goals
- Develop your people
- Go out of your way to recognise people
- Genuinely care for your people
- Listen and adapt to your customer’s needs
- Continually improve your systems
By embedding these habits deeply into your organisation’s culture and DNA, they will become its new way of life. By adopting and sustaining all the habits in the ways outlined in the book, organisations can significantly improve their performance. Numerous side-benefits will include making your organisation a better place to work, improving employee engagement and retention, customer loyalty and advocacy, productivity, innovation, organisational resilience and change capability.
