Top-Tier Performance: The Science Behind It

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

—Will Durant

Ultimately, leadership is all about results. It’s not just about happy employees or happy customers. There have to be great bottom-line results, year after year. And for mission-driven organizations, it’s a double bottom line, where they must achieve both mission goals and stellar financial performance.

And yes, if you want to keep your investors, funders, customers you will need to be a top-tier performer. Because everyone else who’s underperforming compared to the best companies in their sector is going to be left behind.

The Challenge of Leading Top-Tier Performance

A leader can only be successful ultimately if they can demonstrate outstanding results. Nobody ever got promoted because they managed to almost meet targets. 

Senior leaders stand up and take notice when you blow the doors off your targets, showing productivity and results far ahead of other company teams, and ultimately of competitors’ projects, too. Of course, few leaders rise to this level–which is why taking the time to learn how to drive top-tier performance pays big dividends.

Take the British cycling team. In 2002 they had an abysmal record winning only a single gold medal in their 76 year history. Their record was so poor, that no cycle manufacturer wanted to be associated with them for fear of the damage to their brand. That all began to change in when they hired Dave Brailsford as their leader—a professional cycler with an MBA. Brailsford implemented an approach called the Theory of Marginal Gains—a focus on on small, 1% improvements the team could make over time to improve their overall performance. He estimated that small incremental gains would move the squad over five years toward the top of the cycling world. It took three. At the 2008 Beijing Olympics his team won seven out of ten medals in track cycling and went on to equal that achievement at the London Olympics four years later.

Best in class performance is not our of reach for those willing to strive for it.

Watch James Clear (Atomic Habits author) discuss how Sir Dave Brailsford British made cycling the best in the world in this London Real video

4 Keys to Top-Tier Performance 

How can you become a leader who drives top-tier performance? There are four core practices that top performers have in common.

  1. Focused strategy–Be clear about what your strategy is, and communicate it consistently to all stakeholders.

  2. Flawless execution–Identify which processes are essential to meeting customers’ needs and make them super-efficient. Ideally, you should be doubling overall productivity at twice your industry’s average rate.

  3. Performance-oriented culture–Winning companies create cultures that encourage outstanding individual and team contributions and hold all employees accountable for success.

  4. Fast, flexible, flat organization–Top performers simplify their organizational structure to streamline decision making.

There are a set of additional skills your organization will need at least some of as well, to reach top-tier performance. You may excel at making strategic acquisitions, have a boldly innovative culture, or outperform in recruiting great talent. But research has shown the four practices above are at the heart of what drives top-tier performance. 

What is Top-Tier Performance–and Why Does It Matter? 

Let’s define what results constitute top-tier performance. One study of company results describes top-tier performers as the ones that delivered the highest total shareholder return over a ten-year period. Simple enough–the numbers don’t lie.

What’s so important about being a top-tier performer? The fact is, companies that get top results outperform their competitors by a lot. It puts you in a different class as a company. Everyone knows there’s all the other companies–and then there’s you, miles ahead.

Who Needs to Be Able to Lead Top-Tier Performance?

In well-run organizations, everyone down to line workers must be able to show they measurably contribute to overall performance. The CEO and their team may be responsible for the full suite of results factors (sales, profit, market share, development, etc.), but everyone at every role should understand how they contribute to those results.

If you’re managing a small team, your team needs to be a top performer. If you lead a project, it needs to produce outsize results. That’s the only level of achievement that will keep your organization ahead of competitors.

CHEAT SHEET: How Team Leaders Drive High Performance    

Top-performing organizations are far more profitable than ones with mediocre execution, studies have shown. How can you demonstrate to top brass that you’ve built a high-performing team? 

  1. Build a performance-oriented culture. Too often, companies don’t actually reward performance or live their stated values. Make sure the MVPs are recognized.

  2. Deliver products and services that meet expectations. Top performers focus on consistently delivering exactly what customers want.

  3. Empower the front lines. Everyone who interacts with customers needs to be able to solve problems on their own, not wait for a manager to show up.

  4. Improve productivity and eliminate waste. The best companies improve productivity twice as fast as their competitors. Constantly seek ways to operate more efficiently.

Read how to Achieve Top-Tier Performance as part of becoming a stronger leader in the book Twelve Skills: the guide to becoming a stronger leader and accelerating your career.  

Resources on Top-Tier Performance

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About Us

Ed Barrows and Laura M. Downing have nearly 60 years’ experience as certified coaches and university professors and work with high-potential leaders in the world’s top organizations. They’ve distilled their knowledge and research into twelve fundamentals leaders need most to advance in their organizations today. Learn more at www.twelveskills.com. 

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