Organizational Excellence - Lessons from a Lemonade Stand - News: JFD Performance Solutions

A few weeks ago, on a sweltering Sunday afternoon, my son decided that he wanted to sell lemonade. Not wanting to stifle his entrepreneurial spirit, I agreed to help...even though it was nearly 100 degrees outside and I was pretty comfortable inside in the air conditioning. But as he and I set up and ran his small operation, it occurred to me that there were many similarities between what we were doing and what much larger businesses need to do to be successful.

STRIVING. PERFORMING. ACHIEVING. Those three words say a lot. When you STRIVE, you work hard and exert yourself, often against the tide of conventional opinion, competition, and your own complacency, doubts and fears. When you PERFORM, you are using your skills and abilities to do something...to execute and to get results. Ultimately, when you ACHIEVE, you are living a purposeful life. You reach a level of performance that is indicative of true success: you're achieving your goals and dreams!

We have been exploring employee engagement these last few months. The issue is that employee disengagement is increasing, and this is not a recent trend or one driven solely by the poor economy. Sarah Van of Raleigh Consulting Group informed me recently that more Americans left their jobs voluntarily last month than were laid off. What does this say about the state of employee engagement in America...especially in these difficult economic times?

Last month, we discussed the increasing disengagement of employees in the American workforce, some of the drivers, as well as the high cost of employee turnover. (read that article here)

Based on a five-year research project, Good to Great answers the question: "Can a good company become a great company and, if so, how?" In this book, Jim Collins teaches that companies can make the leap to outperform the market leaders. And although his Good To Great set of companies (Abbott Labs, Circuit City, Fannie Mae, Gillette, Kimberly Clark, Kroger, Nucor Steel, Phillip Morris, Pitney Bowes, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo) have experienced a myriad of changes and varying results the last decade (witness Circuit City's demise and Fannie Mae's role in the mortgage debacle), the principles of what originally helped propel them from average performing companies to market leaders remain valid.