How do you improve you and your organisations' performance given the constraints and marketplace dynamics that you are facing?

Almost irrespective of the role that you are in and the markets in which your organisation operates the search for improvements in performance is relentless. The returns from management initiatives such as reengineering and TQM, especially for mature organisations, are now, at best, minimal.

Against a backdrop of globalisation, increasingly effective competition, more rapid commoditisation, revenue and margin pressures and a shrinking senior workforce, to name a few, the demands on your people increase almost daily.

You know that there are dangers in being unresponsive, in not reacting effectively to challenges and in not identifying and securing opportunities quickly. Most of us, however, still continue to be driven by tactical issues and give little attention to the strategically important people development activities. Does this sound familiar? If so, you have come to the right place and we can help.

Today, your need to develop acute awareness over the realities you are facing and the need to foster candid and potentially uncomfortable conversations has never been so urgent. All of this, of course, needs to be married to a continuous commitment to change long before your markets force you to change.

In this quest for performance gains one critical component is almost always indadequately addressed. Yet this component has more opportunity to change your future and your bottom line performance, than any other asset in your inventory. I am speaking of course of your human capital.

In a recent survey of CEO's and HR directors in the UK, conducted by the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD), most organisations (70%) believed it is employees that give the competitive advantage. To a very large extent this is true. It is surely surprising, then, that less than 10% of the directors in the CIPD study rated personnel issues as having a greater priority than other issues such as finance and marketing? The failure of organisations to harness their people-power is the single greatest barrier to securing and maintaining competitive advantage.

At Corporate FIT Science we are intent on bringing to you new tools and techniques that will help you address this issue with precision and speed. Over 25 years of research into many aspects of individual and personal performance, we now know the reasons why over 85% of us perform significantly below our potential. This is true even for the most successful where success is often being achieved at too high a cost and with too much effort. What would it mean for you and your company if 85% of your workforce improved their performance? What would it mean if you and your leadership teams could achieve even more success in the future with less effort than you are expending today? For the vast majority of us, even the most successful, this is not only possible but proven.

For example, while there are many models and tools that underpin the findings of FIT Science you might find it helpful to consider the following model as a useful starting point. While researching the issue of achieving performance improvements through people we have identified a common and significant barrier that we have called the "Knowing-Doing" gap. In essence while it is correct for you to focus on the skills and competencies required for roles within your organisation we now know that investment in the acquisition of these competencies, often through expensive, formalised training such as MBA and advanced leadership programmes, rarely translates into doing something different back in the workplace. In essence our ingrained habits and thinking quickly re-establish themselves as our normal approach in the workplace.

One key constraint to improved performance that you therefore need to address is not only to develop the competencies to know what to do but also to develop the capability to know who you need to become in order that you and your organisation can apply these competencies to produce the maximum impact. In this way the "Knowing-Doing" gap is removed and development of hard skills is balanced by the development of the behaviours and thinking necessary to deploy these skills effectively.

So, how do you improve performance given the constraints and marketplace dynamics that you are facing? Answer: release massive latent potential by developing the behaviours and thinking capabilities of yourself and the key staff within your organisation.