While most leaders believe culture is critical to success, few know how to build one, or sustain it over time.
In their revolutionary book Primed to Perform, Lindsay McGregor and Neel Doshi show you how to do just that.
The result: higher sales, more loyal customers, and more passionate employees.
What people are saying...
"This book is loaded with fascinating, thought-provoking and actionable advice that could transform a workplace from drudgery to real engagement. Take notes."
Patrick Lencioni
President, The Table Group; author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and The Advantage
"Primed to Perform doesn’t just provide tactics for motivating a few superstars; it offers a proven system for motivating an entire workforce. If you want to get your team off yesteryear’s career ladders ...and contributing at their best – read this book."
Liz Wiseman
President, The Wiseman Group; bestselling author of Multipliers and Rookie Smarts
"A truly revolutionary book, Primed to Perform shares the very important link between a company’s culture and their performance. ...This book is on the path of kick starting the culture movement!"
Tom Doctoroff
CEO, Asia Pacific, J. Walter Thompson; author of Twitter is Not a Strategy
"A fresh, ambitious look at the science and practice of motivation, with big implications for leaders to fuel high-performing, high-energy cultures. Primed to Perform is an excellent companion to Drive."
Adam Grant
Wharton professor and New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take
"Getting organizational culture right is as difficult as it is critical. Doshi and McGregor provide numerous real-world recommendations for how to do this. They bring to bear years of hands-on experience that will prove invaluable to leaders in all sectors."
Joel Klein
CEO, Amplify; former Chancellor NYC public schools
"A grand tour of the science of culture, filled with awe-inspiring experiments and surprising, real-life case studies. Leaders will turn to this smart, deeply researched, and incredibly practical book again and again."
Shawn Achor
Happiness researcher and New York Times bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage
Too often, great cultures
feel like magic.
Primed to Perform explains the counter-intuitive science behind great cultures, building on over a century of academic thinking. It shares the simple, highly predictive new measurement tool—the total motivation (ToMo) Factor—that enables you to measure the strength of your culture, and track improvements over time. It explores the authors’ original research into how total motivation leads to higher performance in iconic companies, from Apple to Starbucks to Southwest Airlines. Most importantly, it teaches you to build great cultures, using a systematic and sustainable approach.
High performing cultures can’t be left to chance. Organizations must create systems that shape and maintain them. Whether you’re a five-person team or a startup, a school, a nonprofit or a mega-institution, Primed to Perform shows you how.
Available on October 6, 2015
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take the free surveyPrimed to Perform will teach you how to build high performing cultures.
01. What is performance at its best?
There are two types of performance, both important yet mutually opposed. Most organizations manage tactical performance—the ability to execute the plan. We've all seen performance dashboards and rubrics tracking easy-to-measure outcomes. But adaptive performance—the ability to diverge from a plan—is just as important but much harder to understand and measure, until now.
Organizations must balance tactical with adaptive performance to reach the highest levels of customer experience, innovation, ethics and sales.
Created by strategy
Tactical
Performance
How effectively you execute the plan.
Created by culture
Adaptive
Performance
How effectively you diverge from the plan.
02. What is the psychology of high performance?
To build a high performing culture you must first understand what drives peak performance in individuals. The answer sounds deceptively simple: why you work determines how well you work.
There are six basic reasons why people work—and they aren't created equal. Play, purpose, and potential strengthen adaptive performance while emotional pressure, economic pressure and inertia weaken it. In environments that maximize the first three and minimize the last three, individuals exhibit those hard-to-measure but highly coveted adaptive traits of creativity, problem-solving, persistence and collaboration. This phenomenon is what we call total motivation, or ToMo for short.
03. How does culture drive that psychology?
The highest performing cultures build upon the psychology of total motivation. They train leaders, design jobs, shape performance management systems, and structure their teams to enhance play, purpose, and potential and eliminate emotional pressure, economic pressure, and inertia. The result: higher sales, more loyal customers, and more passionate employees.
Temkin Experience Ratings / Airline Industry
Available on October 6, 2015