Leadership: Creating a high-performance culture

Be visionary, creative, collaborative, innovative, strategic, impactful. Create unique value.

Find your passion. Adapt to the new digital landscape.

The clamor of imperatives grows louder with each day.

There are lots of voices to tell us what it looks like when we become any of the above but few resources that offer a road map that results in real transformation for individuals and organizations.

Building a successful, resilient organization in the face of uncertainty is a challenge we all face. A resilient and dynamic community is built by the individuals and organizations who contribute to it.

These are individuals and organizations that are positive, innovative and looking to the future. And this future depends on moving beyond reactionary strategies and risk management.

It means pursuing a proactive and visionary transformation.

Business leaders in the Corridor believe that success will come to those who create a new value equation, an equation that arises from innovation and activating the potential of their teams.

The ability to achieve your vision and goals already exists inside your organization. However, it is your organization's culture that will determine whether or not you achieve the results you desire. Achieving 21st century imperatives requires flexible, creative, energized teams who are equipped to perform in complex environments and collaborate with a diverse array of partners.

I have learned, with the help of training, that to get to the root cause of organizational issues that negatively impact performance, it comes down to analyzing systems - and eventually people. We must take a critical and honest look at our engagement and attitudes, our persistence and energy, our creativity and the way we treat each other both inside and outside the organization.

Too often we merely try on new performance management systems with activities that focus on telling people what to do or how to feel.

Unfortunately more often than not the impact of these investments is short-term. In a matter of weeks, old behaviors that caused negative issues in the first place have resurfaced and we're right back to where we started.

Or we lament our inability to hire the right people when in fact we have not created the culture that ensures exceptional performance. We focus on eliminating weaknesses instead of releasing the untapped potential of ourselves and our teams.

When you go after the root cause of performance issues, it's not enough to tell people to change their behavior or what to think. You need to give people the tools and best practices to change permanently - from the inside out.

The Pacific Institute has been doing just that for more than 30 years, using leading edge principals of positive organizational psychology coupled with time-tested implementation techniques. Results have shown that people who implement the tools and techniques that emerge from the training are sharing many of the following traits:

•  Heightened self-confidence
•  Self-motivation
•  Accountability in all aspects of their lives
•  Goal and end-results orientation
•  High engagement
•  Open-mindedness and flexibility
•  Creativity

Participants note that, as individuals and as organizations, they have achieved more aggressive goals since graduating from this training. Their organizations are more aligned, effective and strategic.

And whether your organization is small or large, there is value for you.

More than 200 people in the Cedar Rapids area participated in the first sessions of the Pacific Institute's Investment in Excellence. The list includes large and small businesses, city and county government, schools and not-for-profit organizations.

The next Investment in Excellence session will start Feb. 16, organized by the United Way of East Central Iowa.

Join us in transforming our organizations and the community we live in for the better.

To find out more or to register, go to www.UnitedWayofEastCentralIowa.org/pacific-institute. The next session will begin Feb. 16.

To view a short video about the Pacific Institute, check here.

And an about the Pacific Institute, go

here.