The Freedom to Perform

Artists love the word "performance", and so do sports champions!

However, whisper the word "performance" among a group of employees and you are sure to find yourself in a heated debate. Many employees are not comfortable with the word "performance". A questioner writes in pain, "I always thought the word 'service' should be used to exemplify the voluntary intentions of a worker to choose in helping get tasks accomplished. Performance always seems to knock a worker down a notch, and is used to control people in my opinion."

Etymology expert Carol Pozefsky answers with empathy:

The verb 'parfourmen' meaning to do, to carry out or to render, first appears in English in about 1300. It's seen again some seventy years later as 'performen', borrowed from the Old French 'parfornir'. The French meaning was much the same as the English, to do, or to carry out. The noun performance crops up in the early 1500's meaning ,simply, a thing performed. It's not until 1709 that we encounter the word performance in the sense of a public exhibition or entertainment. It appears in an article by Steele in the Tatler. As it is currently used, the word performance, as least to me, calls to mind a performing seal, or a 7 year old tap dancer.

Many resist being treated like a performing "machine", but at the other end, we have artists and sportspersons taking pride in being "Great Performers".

The questioner (mentioned above) seems confused, but he his on the right track when talks about "volunary intentions". The more FREE you are in your job, the more you "volunteer" towards accomplishments. No wonder, Peak Performers are associated with words like "proactive", "initiative", and "ownership".

Employers who know this have the "key" to enable more peak performers. Katzenbach, in his book "Peak Performance: Aligning the Hearts and Minds of Your Employees", starts off with his first meeting with Steve Messana, senior vice president of Human Resources at The Home Depot, who captures the power of frontline commitment by his statement:

We encourage all of our people to come up with their own ideas to capture the customer's attention, and to try them out—there's no need for approval here. Sure, we get some lousy ideas along the way that we would rather not have had; but that's the price we are willing to pay for the widespread individual initiative that makes this place unique.

Dr. André A. de Waal conducted a comprehensive study on "The Characteristics of High Performance Organization". The study says that the first neccessary characteristic for a High Performing organizational "culture" is:

Empower people and give them FREEDOM to decide and act.

Of course, this needs to be backed with a strategy to "define a strong vision that excites and challenges" (strategy characteristic #1 in the study) and "design a good and fair reward and incentive structure" (process characteristic #1).

So, how free are people in your organization?