What Happened to Performance?

This recession is the best thing that has happened to us in decades -- I mean it. Despite, or I'd say because of, the political and economic environment, top performers are rising out of the malaise of easy wealth, claiming their right to lead, getting beyond just surviving, and digging deep into their minds and souls to be all they can be again - innovate, develop, produce, perform.

"For the past few months you’ve had an excuse for when life didn’t go your way. . . You couldn’t pay your mortgage and your house was foreclosed on? Don’t worry, it wasn’t you, it was the recession. You lost your job and now you’re stuck at home cruising Twitter ‘looking for a new one’ all day? Don’t fret. It wasn’t you, it’s the recession. Can’t find new clients so you’re left bitterly blogging that clients suck and the frauds in the industry are stealing your dollars? Calm down, pretty, have a cookie and take a nap. It’s the recession. Actually, it’s probably not the recession. It’s probably you." I say, Right On, Lisa Barone!

In Why Your Marketing Isn't Effective (Geoffrey James) BNET Feb 5, 2009, and When Opportunity Knocks, It's Too Late (Steve Tobak) BNET Feb 3, 2009, the authors provoke readers to be proactive, tie compensation to performance, and "Sure, there other factors like technology and luck, but if you want to be successful in business, you need to take risks by acting on your own ideas and intuition. If you wait for opportunity to knock, it’ll likely be too late."

I'm looking forward to the book due out in August by Michael Beer and his HBR colleagues, High Commitment High Performance: How to Build A Resilient Organization for Sustained Advantage. "Starting with leaders who have the right values, Beer ... outlines what practitioners must do in HR, structure, systems, goals, culture, and strategy to create high-performance organizations."

Consider those words - "leaders who have the right values"...the mere fact that those words are being highly debated in this age is a huge plus for our society.