The Recipe for Creating a High Performance Culture

I have been interested in high performing teams since I played water polo at University. This interest in working with people to achieve a common aim led me to a career in the Royal Marines – where I was exposed to a truly elite high performing culture.

I have been preparing to write something on this subject for about a year now. This is a summary of what I have learnt to date and it is my intent to update this article as I find out more about the principles behind high performance.

High Performance Cultures and High Performing Teams don’t just outperform their competition – they demolish them. When these groups get together, they’re able to consistently outperform their competitors time and time again.

In my experience, the world of business has been comparatively slow to understand this but I do think that the tide is starting to turn. Netflix are the stand-out example. They make it clear that their ‘culture strategy’ forms part of their hiring process. On their jobs page – they make it clear that they are looking for a certain type of person that will fit in with their culture.

This is not the usual abstract statement that someone uses when they say that they’re looking for a good ‘cultural fit’ – unless you have a clear picture of what you’re looking for, chances are a ‘good cultural fit’ will be based on whether you like the person or not!

Netflix have been clear about who they’re looking for and the sort of person that will fit with their culture. It is unsurprising that their revenue grew at an average rate of 48% last year – Culture delivers performance.

If you want to understand how to build a high performance culture, professional sporting organisations are a good place to start. The reason for this is that the rules of the game even up the playing field. In rugby, 15 players will line up against 15 players.

It is their performance and how they work as a team that will give them the advantage and ‘the win’. This is why I have chosen to focus on sports teams where the field is evenly matched.

Formula One by contrast relies on the performance of technology which ‘muddies the waters slightly’. Typically, an average driver in a great car will win the World Championship… but does that make him the best driver in the world? I am not sure.

My point is that if you want to understand human performance – it’s better to look at environments where the playing field has been levelled by the rules of the game.

I have been studying Team Sky, The All Blacks, Toulon RFC, Manchester United (under Fergusson not Van Gaal!) and the 2003 England Rugby Team to try and understand what they all have in common. I wanted to see if there are any themes that emerge that can be taken from the world of sport to the world of business.

Ultimately, a sports team is just a group of people working together to achieve a common aim – isn’t that what business does as well?

These are the key themes that I have found exist in all these organisations. You may have seen some of the ingredients but it is how they’re put together that counts.

Set the Vision

Every single one of these teams has a vision – a clear picture of the future that they were working towards. It was always big, scary and audacious which meant that it was also inspiring. When businesses talk about ‘providing excellent customer service and returning shareholder value’, no one listens and no one cares. It is the same tired message that most businesses trot out. If you want to be different and unique – be different and unique.

Make your vision compelling and use it to bring people on-board who believe in you and believe in your vision.

If people tell you that ‘it can’t be done’, don’t waste energy convincing them – let them think that – allow them to self-select themselves out of the team.

Visions are often developed by one person who then builds a small group who believe it as much as they do. This builds a coalition of the willing who believe in the vision. In Rugby, Clive Woodward set out to win the World Cup whilst Mourad Boudjellal wanted Toulon to dominate the European Rugby Stage.

Perhaps the best example of sporting vision is that of Dave Brailsford who set the following in 2010…

To win the greatest bike race in the world, within five years, to do it with a British rider, and do it clean. And in doing so to inspire a million more people to take up cycling.

They achieved their vision winning twice inside five years. In 2015, they set another five year vision. You can read more about it here. This is an excellent example of a clear vision. Everyone involved knows where they’re going and every decision they take can be weighed up against whether it will help or hinder them in making the vision a reality.

I have a clear example of this from a personal perspective. In December 2015, I spoke to John Eades of Learnloft. I remember one thing from the conversation – ‘that he wanted to have an impact on helping the millennial generation develop into leaders’. I remember that this inspired and intrigued me in equal measure. Four months later, we are working on a project that will provide a solution to this problem. That could never have happened without him sharing an inspiring vision for the future with me.

Visions inform strategy – which is effectively your plan to achieve a vision. There are many different ways of delivering a strategy. Manchester United and Manchester City shared the same vision – ‘to win the league’ but their strategies for how they were going to achieve it were completely different. United preferred to develop talent, City preferred to buy it.

There is plenty written about strategy but in my opinion, setting a strategy isn’t difficult. It’s setting the direction on the compass. Executing a strategy is tough – that’s what leaders do.

Choose Attitude over Skills

Once you have your vision and a sense of your shared values. Recruit people who are inspired by your vision and share your values. Skills are necessary but they can be taught – attitude can’t.

The Royal Marines don’t recruit people with skills. Few people join the Corps knowing how to fire a rifle or lead a section attack. They recruit people with the right attitude and ‘potential’ for further development. They don’t look for the finished article who perfectly match the job description. They look for those with the potential to learn and develop.

When Ronaldo joined Manchester United, he was a stick-thin 18 year-old. Interestingly, he requested No.28 to be his squad number, the same as it had been at Sporting Lisbon. But was given the famous No.7 which spurred him on to perform and ‘step into the shirt’. He chose Manchester United deliberately because he believed that he could learn and develop the most under Sir Alex Ferguson and his coaching staff.

Choose people with the right attitude – guide them, develop them and give them honest feedback. If you grow world-class players, young talent will seek you out.

If you buy world-class players, you’ll attract mercenaries.

Set Standards

Set your standards high. Hold your leaders to account for exemplifying these standards.

Make it clear what ‘good looks like’. What behaviour is acceptable and what isn’t. When Sir Alex took over at Manchester United in 1986 he was faced with a culture of heavy drinking. He explained that this was no longer acceptable – he made it clear where the bar was (not literally!) and then he created consequences for those that chose not to follow the standards that he set. Within a year, those that continued to drink were sold off to other clubs.

Leaders make it clear what they expect.

They then create consequences to reinforce their expectations.

The coach for the Green Bay Packers, Vince Lombardi, was ahead of his time when he insisted in 1960 that he ‘viewed his players as neither black nor white, but Packer green’. He would not tolerate racism or prejudice in any form. Anyone found doing so had their contract terminated. This might not be unusual now but there weren’t many coaches doing that in 1960.

High performing teams also create rituals which indicate ‘how we do things around here’. These rituals mark them out as different from their competitors or other teams. They are another form of behavioural standards.

The most famous example is the ‘haka’ by the All Blacks but rituals are often more subtle. Toulon RFC get off their team bus and walk through a tunnel made by the crowd before entering their home stadium – it’s a small thing but it reminds the players of the relationship that the team has with its fans. Instead of disconnecting the team from their support, Toulon immerse themselves in it.

The military is full of rituals – all Royal Marines wear their sleeves rolled up at all times – whatever the weather. It helps mark us out from our Army counterparts.

There are plenty of other examples here, look at any high performing team in depth and you will start to see rituals that make them different.

Feedback and Challenge

A culture of feedback and healthy challenge is fundamental to all high performing cultures. But this is easier to talk about than it is to create.

In order to create a culture of feedback and challenge – you need to set the foundations.

First, people have to be comfortable divorcing their performance away from their personalities. Put another way, a poor performance does not reflect on you as an individual. They are two separate things but they require a level of emotional maturity to understand.

Once people realise that their performance is not a reflection of them as an individual, you can start to think about creating a feedback culture. It needs to be developed sensitively though. Feedback is supposed to be a gift designed to help you improve, not something designed to hurt or leave someone feeling bad. The person giving the feedback holds the responsibility to get this right.

When Clive Woodward was preparing the England Rugby Team for the World Cup in 2003, they started to use a professional referee during their practice games. When the ref spotted an infringement and gave a penalty, the team would say ‘you’ve just lost us the world cup!’

It might sound a bit brutal but this is the sort of blunt, instant feedback that improves discipline on the field. Feedback supports behavioral change.

Relentless Desire to Improve

You are either getting better or you are getting worse. If you are not improving and you think you’re standing still, you should assume that everyone else is improving and in comparison – you are getting worse.

High performing teams spend time improving their processes. They spend time working on things today that will make them stronger tomorrow. They don’t manage the present – they prepare for the future.

The All Blacks Team that won the World Cup in 2015 carried with them the weight of a country’s expectations. When they looked at previously unsuccessful campaigns in 2003 and 2007 they realised that the weight of this expectation wasn’t helping them.

They couldn’t remove this weight of expectation but they could choose how they were going to react to it.

In 2011, instead of focussing on the outcome which they could never control, they focussed on excellent processes. They focussed on what they could control knowing that if they followed their game plan and followed their processes, the result would come.

I think that this is really important because we cannot control everything. We like to think that we can but in reality that’s not true.

Work out what you can and can’t control. Create excellent processes that mean when you do something it has the best chance of delivering the best outcome. Forget about the other stuff.

Celebrate Success and Enjoy the Journey

Lastly, high performing teams take time to celebrate success and enjoy the journey. It’s not worth it if you don’t enjoy it. There are more important things in life than winning – in both business and in sport.

Family comes first – because when the final whistle goes, you retire, or the business gets sold – they’re going to be the ones that look after you – so make sure you take time to look after them.

If there is anything you feel I have missed – please feel free to comment – I consider this a work in progress that I will revise as I learn more!