Part Three: A Change in Focus - The 2000's to Today

Our journey through the evolution of organizational performance has taken us from WWII command and control top down driven leadership, to the age of management of 70’s, 80’s and 90’s where change management, performance management, management by objectives, KPI’s and dashboards were just a few of the performance drivers. As you can still tell in today's climate, most anything and everything that could be measured and managed was, including people. Both the command and control and scientific management era's created performance environments of employee compliance, not employee commitment and engagement. 

However, in the 2000’s, a few organizations started to focus less on productivity measures and more on the consumer and creating a different customer experience. Organizations like Starbucks, Netflix, UBER and many others created unique and differentiated customer experiences and changed the competitive landscapes in their respective markets. While operational excellence and standard operating practices are crucial, the key performance focus is on delivering and enhancing the customer experience. 

In addition, it's during this era you have seen organizations develop mission and vision statements and many adopt organizational core values. The challenge to proclaiming mission, vision, and values statements is actually staying true to those. In fact, in your organization's, how many people know what they are, and do they support and drive the daily actions and behaviors of all (or at least most) of the employees?

We've also begun to hear about the importance of “employee engagement” in delivering outstanding customer service. So enter in the annual or bi-annual employee engagement survey and the efforts to enhance employee engagement by most organizations today. The challenge is turning that survey feedback into sustained, year over year, increased employee engagement and commitment. Most organizations, unfortunately, fail to move the mark. 

In fact, according to the Gallup Organization’s 2017 American Workplace Study, employee engagement has not moved over 2-3 percentages points in the last 18 years.

Yes, you read that right, the last 18 YEARS!

This leads us to where we find organizational performance today. The foundation is set, but what is the next evolution in organizational performance?  Next week we explore the future of purpose-driven, employee engaged, leader supported, organization enabled performance.

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Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.