In business there is always the expectation of performance and accountability. At every level of an organisation, efficiency and quality is demanded so it must be in excellent operational condition if it is to succeed.

If your organisation strives to continually improve learning, performance and outcomes it must have leading-edge people practices. Many executives spend their time and money adjusting the systems in which people operate, rather than targeting people's performance directly. The reason for this is they have not profoundly understood what is at the source of human performance; therefore they have no access in how to elevate it.

The concept of peak performance is vested in the premise that people, not systems and process, are the prime contributors to sustainability. Academics and practitioners recognise that the collaborative, self managed, democratic organisation is the formulae for success and the barriers of hierarchy, bureaucracy and autocracy must be broken.

The most evident characteristic of any peak performing business is the energy level that it exudes. Walking into that workplace you feel the energy which is noticeably different from any average workplace. Activity levels are more intense, attitudes are more positive, interactions are less constrained, and formal positions are less evident. 

People work hard, but they have fun at work and take full advantage of a widespread sense of humor. This implies a quotient of extra individual and collective energy well beyond the norm.

When the “organisational way” becomes the only way of doing things, the organisation looses flexibility and opportunity. Much of management attention is devoted to the tools and techniques that squeeze more out of the existing paradigm and when the competitive environment pushes the organization to its limits, the old paradigm no longer holds. People become disenchanted, cynical, and resigned, which impacts directly on the perceptions of the brand/organisation in the marketplace.

Until an organisation has the ability to identify the paradigm it exists in, there is no access to creating breakthrough results. The bottom line is people = performance = profits.

Without impacting the people and giving them an access to break their own performance barriers, profits will either diminish, or remain the same.   

*  Lisa Rubinstein is the managing director of The Institute For Human Potential.