Peak Performance: Aligning the Hearts and Minds of Your Employees

by Jon R. Katzenbach

This book outperforms the competition with employees' positive emotional energy. It takes a fired-up workforce to deliver consistently higher levels of performance than its competition. What fuels the fire? Emotional commitment to company success, says Jon Katzenbach. Drawing on an in-depth study of twenty-five enterprises - including Marriott International, The Home Depot, Hewlett-Packard, Southwest Airlines, and the U.S. Marine Corps - the author found distinct patterns in how companies engage their employees to capitalize on emotional energy.At the heart of "Peak Performance" lies Katzenbach's identification of five balanced motivational the Mission, Values, and Pride Path, the Process and Metrics Path, the Entrepreneurial Spirit Path, the Individual Achievement Path, and the Recognition and Celebration Path. He contends that these paths create a framework of options for managers about where and how to generate emotional energy and how to channel that energy to achieve higher performance. Essential to each path is leadership's commitment to strike a balance between enterprise performance and worker fulfillment. Through its detailed case studies, "Peak Performance" highlights the various sources of emotional energy unique to each organization and the discipline companies need to follow their chosen paths. The book concludes with guidelines for managers seeking to reshape their practices to achieve better performance from their own workforces and gain the resulting competitive edge.

Genres: Business

356 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2000

Reviews

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Okay... so I've had these Organizational Development books staring me in the face from my bookshelf for a year or two now and I finally did more than skim them, but picked one up and read it through. Color me unimpressed. What was best about it was also what I found most frustrating about it. That is, instead of developing some organizational model and then searching for top performing organizations to bear that model out, Katzenbach and his team instead analyze top performing organizations and tease out five different "paths" for effective organizational development.
The result is well researched and interesting enough, but so disperse that it lacks much bite. The best lesson, frankly, is to steer clear of what could be the temptation of this book, that is, trying to sharpen all of the "paths" laid out.
For churches, reading through chapter three ("The Mission, Values, and Pride Path") is probably sufficient.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found Peak Performance to be a comfortable read with several good ideas on assisting leaders seek methods to better coach their team members and through coaching to improve overall individual and group performance.