Exemplary Performance: Driving Business Results by Benchmarking Your Star Performers

Praise for Exemplary Performance

“I have seen the transformative power of human performance improvement in the power industry where it has produced measurable results in areas such as safety performance. Executives, managers, and other leaders will benefit from this approach, enabling exemplary performance by replicating the results of their stars.”

—Carl English, vice-chairman (retired), American Electric Power

“A must-read for anyone accountable for producing and leading high-performing individuals or teams.”

—Jamie Torchiana, learning implementation leader, Sales Strategy, AstraZeneca

“Uniquely captures profound ideas, frames them concisely, and explains how they work in the real world in a powerful way. If you want to link your business’s capability development to actual business outcome, this book might be all you need. A fantastic read.”

—Don Shoultz, head of learning and development, BP Upstream Learning

Do you want to capture greater results with your existing resources to the tune of 5%, 15% or even 25%? If you are an executive or manager, this book will provide you with the models required so that you can shift the performance curve for your own team, department, division, or enterprise. It will demonstrate that you don’t have to accept the significant difference that exists between the results that your good and your best performers produce. While reading this book, you will begin to capture the insights of your exemplary performers and identify ways of using their expertise to drive greater results. Why? Because for over 25 years, these authors have helped organizations reach their goals by doing just that: replicating the performance of stars and shifting the performance curve to the right, producing greater results with current resources!

The authors’ tested method for benchmarking exemplary performance has proven successful across multiple industries such as telecommunications, financial services, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, and high technology. In this book, Paul H. Elliott and Alfred C. Folsom outline what it takes to prioritize performance efforts to identify the true stars and create models of optimal performance for critical roles within an organization. Exemplary Performance also shows how to architect the changes required to shift the performance curve.

Elliott and Folsom include the common characteristics that star performers share and describe the role of leadership that enables high performance. The book stresses the need to align the multiple influences that can support or inhibit high performance. Step by step, the book explores how to address such critical issues as training, readiness, and performance support, as well as proven methods for hiring and assigning the right people for the right job.

Exemplary Performance provides a clear path to help organizations translate this business strategy into measurable results.