What It Takes

So, what does it take to be a top-performing organization?

According to research conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), there are five elements correlated with high-performing organizations: strategy, leadership, talent, culture, and market.

Although these elements are always important, i4cp finds the differences between high-performing and low-performing organizations in these critical areas has widened considerably in the current economic climate.

Perhaps most surprising is the impact of culture: The difference between high and low performers in the culture category is 5.99 compared with 2.94. Being viewed as “a good place to work” apparently matters—a lot.

The research from i4cp strongly suggests that waiting out a difficult economic climate is not a viable solution; instead, tough times are ideal times to raise the bar in these critical areas.

An overview of this comprehensive and noteworthy study, which provides details about each category, is available at TMT. Full survey findings are available to i4cp corporate members.