How to create the high-performance, high-commitment organization Integrating knowledge from strategic management, performance management, and organization design, strategic human resource expert and Harvard Business School Professor Michael Beer outlines what the high-commitment, high-performance organization looks like and provides practitioners with the transformation process to help them get there. Starting with leaders who have the right values, Beer shows how to weave together a complete system that includes top-to-bottom communication, organization design, HR policies, and leadership transformation process, and outlines what practitioners must do in HR, structure, systems, goals, culture, and strategy to create high-performance organizations.

MICHAEL BEER is Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus at Harvard Business School and chairman of TruePoint, a research-based consultancy. Beer is the author or coauthor of nine books including Managing Human Assets and the award-winning The Critical Path to Corporate Renewal.

IN HIS TIME-TESTED approach to organizational success, Harvard Business School's Michael Beer integrates knowledge from the fields of leadership, strategic management, human resource management, organization design and organization development and change to show how a company can be transformed to achieve sustained high commitment and high performance. Drawing on numerous management studies and his work with senior managers who succeeded in building a high commitment, high performance organization, Beer provides leaders with the information they need to make the transformation process a reality.

Anchoring his approach on leaders who have the right values, Michael Beer shows how to weave together a complete system that will ultimately spell business successno matter how challenging the economic climate. To build such a system, leaders will have to make courageous and principled choices about how to organize, manage, and lead the firm.

High Commitment, High Performance stresses the importance of focusing on both economic and organizational health. To achieve a fully functioning HCHP company, six silent barriers to commitment and performance must be overcome. Beer explains that successful senior executives build a resilient organization through an honest and collective action learning process that enables them to partner with key people in identifying barriers and redesigning and realigning the organization with values, strategy and economic realities. This learning and governance process enables rapid realignment and high commitment. Beer not only illustrates the process of corporate leadership and transformation, but outlines principles for designing the strategic management process, organizing the firm and managing its human resources found in the most successful HCHP companies.

High Commitment, High Performance provides a much-needed map for leaders who aspire to develop sustained high performance and commitment.

Zusammenfassung

How to create the high-performance, high-commitment organization

Integrating knowledge from strategic management, performance management, and organization design, strategic human resource expert and Harvard Business School Professor Michael Beer outlines what the high-commitment, high-performance organization looks like and provides practitioners with the transformation process to help them get there. Starting with leaders who have the right values, Beer shows how to weave together a complete system that includes top-to-bottom communication, organization design, HR policies, and leadership transformation process, and outlines what practitioners must do in HR, structure, systems, goals, culture, and strategy to create high-performance organizations.

Preface xi

1 Introduction 1

Part One: The High Commitment, High Performance Organization 17

2 Pillars of High Commitment, High Performance Organizations 19

3 Principled Choice and Discipline are Essential 51

4 Building the High Commitment, High Performance System 79

Part Two: What Stands in the Way 91

5 Hidden Barriers to Sustained High Commitment and High Performance 93

Part Three: Leadership and Learning Change Levers 119

6 Lead a Collective Learning Process 121

7 Enable Truth to Speak to Power 157

Part Four: Organization Design Change Levers 187

8 Manage Organizational Performance Strategically 189

9 Organize for Performance and Commitment 223

10 Develop Human and Social Capital 255

Part Five: Transforming the Organization 293

11 Embrace E and O Change Strategies 295

12 Epilogue 327

End Notes 333

Acknowledgments 369

Index 373

The Author 391