What separates organizations that occasionally succeed from those that consistently achieve elite performance? In this episode of The Champion Forum Podcast, Jeff Hancher welcomes leadership expert and bestselling author Mark Miller back to the show to discuss the newly revised fourth edition of The Secret, coauthored with Ken Blanchard. Jeff and Mark explore the difference between serving someone and leading them, the importance of examining a leader’s true motivation, and why results produced by a self-serving leader are often unsustainable. They also discuss lifelong learning, developing leadership strengths, addressing performance gaps, and helping people find roles where they can thrive. You’ll discover why servant leadership remains a superior leadership model and how leaders can create performance that lasts.
About Mark Miller
Mark Miller is the Vice President of High Performance Leadership at Chick-fil-A, where his career began more than 40 years ago as an hourly team member. Since then, he has served in roles across the organization, including operations, communications, training, customer satisfaction, and leadership development.
For the past two decades, Mark has focused on equipping leaders to grow themselves, strengthen their teams, and build high-performing organizations. He is also a bestselling author and coauthor whose leadership books have reached more than one million readers in over 25 languages. His work is grounded in a simple goal: uncover timeless leadership principles and make them practical for leaders in the real world.
A High-Performance Organization (noun): an organization that is capable of achieving and sustaining elite levels of performance. Not a good month, not a good quarter, not a good year, but those that consistently lead their industry.
What are healthy organizations doing today that average organizations or unhealthy organizations are not?
My team at Chick-fil-A asked that question several years ago because we were trying to help all three thousand restaurants, or however many we had at the time, take their performance to the next level. We did a multi-year study of high-performance organizations. We asked this question: What is universally true about high-performance organizations? High-performance organizations fundamentally do four things that keep them at the top of their game.
1. They bet on leadership.
2. They act as one. They work tirelessly on aligning people and creating a culture that will move them toward their aspiration.
3. They win the heart. They create engaged teams that care about their work, co-workers, company, and organization. They help people care more.
4. They excel at execution.
- Choose one role on your team and identify four or five baseline competencies required to succeed in it. Then evaluate for each member of your team:
- Which competencies are being met?
- Which competency gaps are limiting performance?
- What natural strengths could help this person excel?
- Would the individual thrive more in a different role?
This activity can help you distinguish between coaching a weakness and keeping someone in a position where they cannot succeed. If you find that someone is not in a strong position, help them come up with a plan to improve or grow in a skill that could allow them to get a different role.
- Rate your team from one to five in each of the four characteristics of high-performance organizations.
- Bet on leadership
- Act as one
- Win the heart
- Excel at execution
For each category, require one specific example supporting the rating. Then have the group identify the lowest-scoring area and choose one action to address it over the next 30 days. Make sure you put a clear action to it and consider ways to get people involved at all levels of the company. Also consider what metrics will help you see if your actions are leading to improvement.