This article originally appeared in The Healthy, High-Performing Cultures Issue of Performance Matters Magazine. To request a print or digital copy of the magazine, click here.
As leaders, we are increasingly attuned to the health of our organization’s culture. Much like one’s personal health, creating and sustaining a healthy, high-performing organization is an ongoing effort that requires intentionality. Rather than leave culture to chance, skilled leaders appreciate that a healthy culture is central to an organization’s ability to perform. Maintaining a pulse on the health of an organization is crucial for addressing needs so that employees are engaged, motivated, and thriving—and the organization is collectively able to achieve its mission.
In serving clients across many different industries, we witness organizations at various points along their journey of becoming heathy and high performing. (At TiER1, we’re also on that continuous journey!) There isn’t a single mold for what represents a thriving organization. Yet at the core, our experience is that healthy, high-performing organizations and teams consistently balance six fundamental and interconnected needs.
Six core needs of healthy, high-performing organizations
Organizations are living and dynamic systems; being perfectly in balance or static is not the goal. Through tools like TiER1’s THRiVE Index, thriving organizations consistently attend to six core needs, gauge how they’re doing in those areas, and actively take steps to balance them.
1. Purpose: A collective sense that we’re doing meaningful work
If your organization has a strong sense of purpose, you’ll know it because you’ll feel it. Employees believe their work is meaningful and take pride in their organization. They believe the organization contributes to something greater than itself and makes a positive difference in peoples’ lives.
This sense of purpose isn’t just a nice-to-have. Research shows that a strong mission and sense of collective purpose (beyond maximizing profits) contributes to many things leaders care about—including increased financial performance, employee engagement, retention, and a sense of fulfillment among employees.
2. Connection: Alignment and connectivity among people, values, behaviors, and organizational systems
We know from research that connection and alignment are crucial for health and organizational performance. An organization with high degrees of connection likely experiences a shared and cohesive identity as well as a sense of belonging and community among employees.
An organization strong in connection is people centered, welcoming, and inclusive, with a focus on meaningful and authentic relationships. When there’s alignment, your policies, practices, and structures are congruent with stated beliefs and values. Leaders truly “walk the talk” and demonstrate the mindsets and behaviors that are desired and expected.
3. Capability: The knowledge, skills, and expertise required to perform the necessary work
Organizations with healthy capability not only have the skills and expertise needed; they also productively apply and appropriately staff their talent through well-designed roles, structures, and work processes. Capability can manifest in many ways—such as strong leadership that guides and inspires, as well as effective collaboration that harnesses the power of multidisciplinary perspectives.
While much of an organization’s capability rests within its internal talent, healthy and high-performing organizations are also adept at recognizing when external expertise or business partnerships are needed.
4. Resources: The tools, training, feedback, and other supports that people need to do their best work
When your organization is fully resourced, employees feel supported, well-equipped, and nurtured. You’ll see indicators such as availability and investment of financial resources; human-centered tools and technology that support productive work; and training and development opportunities that equip employees with the know-how to do their best work.
A well-resourced organization also meets employees’ information needs by providing sufficient and clear communications around vision, direction, processes, and expectations. Employees receive sufficient guidance and feedback to do their best work, as well as encouragement and space for rest, well-being, and renewal of energy.
5. Potential: The force that pulls an organization forward toward something greater than today
If your organization is high in potential, it will show up in the mindsets and behaviors of your senior leaders all the way through your frontline employees. You’ll feel a sense of collective hope and optimism about the future. There’s likely a persistent drive toward growth and new opportunities, with employees innovating, embracing challenges, and persevering despite setbacks or adversity.
With this collective growth mindset, employees see obstacles and even failures as opportunities for growth and learning. Leaders demonstrate that they believe in the inherent strengths of people by giving employees the space to stretch, experiment, and grow so they can perform at their best.
6. Security: The sense of safety (physical, financial, cyber, psychological) experienced by employees within an organization
Psychological safety has profound impacts on organizational health, employee engagement, and workplace performance. Do leaders in your organization communicate transparently about the performance of the business and its outlook? Do they communicate if and when internal or market dynamics threaten the organization’s stability, along with plans for weathering the storm? If so, your organization may be high in security.
Highly secure organizations have generous levels of trust, transparency, flexibility, and autonomy; indicators include open and respectful exchange of ideas, diverse perspectives, and an abundance mindset. Leaders create a safe environment where employees feel secure enough to stretch, question assumptions, experiment with new ways of working, and achieve their potential.
Optimizing organizational health through effective diagnosis
The six needs of healthy, high-performing organizations are naturally in tension with one another. Overly prioritizing or focusing on one need (or a set of needs) can create systemic imbalances at any point in an organization’s evolution. This can be particularly profound in high-growth organizations, which may emphasize innovating (doubling down on potential, purpose, and capability) yet give insufficient attention to necessary resources, security, and connection to ground it—like structures and people systems built to scale.
So, how do we stay attuned to the six needs, recognize when there’s an imbalance, and take steps to create better balance?
Organizational health is constantly evolving, which requires leaders to develop a habit of regular introspection and assessment. Just as individual self-awareness is essential for continued personal development, organizational self-awareness serves a similar purpose. It helps drive alignment among leadership of the organization’s current state, including where it is strong and where it needs intentional focus.
Sometimes leaders have an intuitive sense and can pick up on indicators suggesting certain needs aren’t being met sufficiently. Yet organizations are complex systems where people, processes, and technology intermingle in sometimes surprising or unintended ways. It’s difficult to identify everything through intuition alone. What may appear to be a problem on the surface could be the symptom of a different underlying issue.
Effective diagnosis through assessment can help leaders avoid getting fixated on the symptoms and instead pinpoint the “right” underlying ailments to treat. Assessment also enables leaders to identify key strengths and bright spots that can support even greater organizational health and success. Through assessment, leaders are better positioned to develop effective, responsive solutions as well as identify impacts to organizational health based on actions taken or interventions made. Whether you use interviews, surveys, observation, material review, data mining—or ideally, some combination of these methods—what’s important is to surface insights for growth from diverse perspectives across levels and roles within the organization.
The journey of becoming healthy and high performing
For many leaders, optimizing their organization’s health and performance is top of mind. By assessing the six core needs at the heart of healthy, high-performing organizations, it’s possible to identify where the organization is strong as well as diagnose opportunities to bring the organization into better balance and health. When we make assessment a habit, we can confidently determine the most appropriate interventions to improve organizational health and achieve optimal performance.
This article originally appeared in The Healthy, High-Performing Cultures Issue of Performance Matters Magazine. To request a print or digital copy of the magazine, click here.
