The Three Laws of Performance: Rewriting the Future of Your Organization and Your Life

A proven system for rallying all of an organizations employees around a new vision and ideas for making the vision stickWhen something at work isnt going smoothly, managers struggle with what part of the problem to tackle first. Do they start with cost reduction? Or should they go for process improvements first? The authorswho have helped hundreds of companies and individuals change and improvesay spend time and money adjusting the systems in which people operate, rather than targeting people and their performance directly. The authors show that its in fact possible to change everything at oncewith a focus on making such transformations permanent and repeatable. Brandnew Introduction written for the paperback edition Filled with illustrative examples from Northrup Grumman, BHPBilliton, Reebok, Harvard Business School, and many others Two experts in the field show how to make major transformations happenThe book outlines a process for engaging all employees to buyin to an improved vision of an organizations new and improved future.AmazonExclusive Q&A with Steve Zaffron and Dave LoganAuthor Steve Zaffron What are the three laws of performance?The laws of performance are universal. That is, any time people are involved in a situation, the laws apply. They arent steps or tips, but general principles that are always at work. They are also phrased in a precise way, to give maximum insight and applicability. The laws are:1. How people perform correlates to how situations occur to them.2. How situations occur arises in language.3. Future based language transforms how situations occur to people.In your opinion, what do leaders struggle with the most and how can the laws help them?The two biggest issues we hear from leaders are lack of buyin and an absence in ownership. The first problem often becomes acute when the leaders, working with experts, determine what plan people should implement, and the work force doesnt want to do it, or doesnt engage with passion. Many leaders try to solve the resulting issues with incentives, which often make the problem worse, as Daniel Pinks book Drive demonstrates.The second problemabsence of ownershipis related to lack of buyin, but runs deeper. The problem, as many leaders have expressed to us, is that people dont treat the business as though its their business. In some cases, it literally is their business, for example when people have some equity in the company through stock options. Yet even in many of these situations, people dont act as though they are owners. Many leaders have expressed that nothing they ever tried has fixed the ownership problem.The Three Laws of Performance can help with both problems by encouraging leaders to see that peoples actions are correlated to how situations occur to them. The second and third laws, taken together, say that futurebased languagesuch as declarations, promises, and commitmentstransform how situations occur to people. By focusing on the way in which things are occurring to the people, their actions naturally shift. The point is clear when we remember that the Declaration of Independence transformed how the experience of being a colonist occurred for the colonists. The facts hadnt changedthe British still asserted their control. But the actions of the colonists shifted in a dance with the Declaration. What had been skirmishes by the colonists now became fullscale war and eventually the birth of a nation.Author Dave Logan The same situation happened recently in Egypt, when decades of tyrannical rule ended in 18 days. What really happened is that the situations occurred in a new way to Egyptians, and their actions naturally shifted. Imagine this level of empowerment and engagement in your organization. Using these three laws in an organization calls forth peoples participation and involvement in surprising and exciting new ways.It seems that people can apply the lessons here in many ways how they c