Welcome to the age of limitless possibility where reality turns out excately what you make it. welcome to the age of massive information where you – you the individual, you the business, you the organisation, you the government can imagined, write out your story and walk into it. Welcome to the era of brain power where the amount of input you feed into your brain determines your output in life. In this time and age, resources availbale at the click of a mouse provides opportunities for individual, business, organisation and government to achieve peak performance in the pursuit of its vision.
To the individual, peak performance is becoming all you can be, exceeding your optimum in the pursuit of your most imaginable challenge. It also conotes living the extraordinary life that you deserve. For the business, organisation or government peak performance is exceeding the greatest challenge in the pursuit of its mission. Peak performance come by beating your challenge. It is obtainable through creative thinking, motivation, hardwork, discipline, passion and commitment. Succesful nation of the future are those who develop high quality skilled and motivating workforce that can exceeds the most imaginable challeges in their organisation. Achieving peak performance in any orgnisation begins with a leader who defines the mission and sets the focus. Such a leader must have a clear picture in his mind what the organisation plans to do. That leader must be an inspiring and motivating player, a role model who provides a benchmark for others to follow. He nurtures each worker in the right place within the organisation inspiring trust in himself and the orgnisation. The leader stays inside the story.Let me say that there should be more than one inspirational leader within the same organisation. Of course each worker should be a motivating worker in his own place.
The story continues with a clear definition of the organisation’mission. Why does your organization exist? what meaning does it provide? What need does it meet? What difference does it make?the mission explained the motive behing the establishment, why it does exist and shows the way forward. Mission defined provides direction for all stakeholders of the organisation. In truth, peak performance is measured on the basis of the greatest imaginable challenge that an individual or organisation sets for itself. The challenge must be realistic and tangible. It is on this challenge that all participants must target and concentrate decisive forrce. And as soon as the challege is knocked off, the leader look out for another streching and rewarding challenge to keep the wave of peak performance flowing. For example one of the permanent challenge you can keep exploring as a manufacturer or service provider is to relentlessy look for ways to expand your customers/client base.
The next vital ingredient to nurturing peak performance is focus. focus is the concentrating of all energies on actions needed to achieve the organisation’s mission.Focus is identifying specific action that must be taken to meet the challenge. And I will recommend that the action should be few to enable maximum concentration. Focus helps to clarifies values and priorities. In fact, peak performance principles works in every area of human endeavours; for individual, business, organisation, government or the society at large. Clive Gilson, Mike Pratts and other reseachers at the University of Waikaito, New Zealand did extensive reseach on top sports organisation and discovered that there are consistent practices that enables the players to work together enjoyably and effectively to exceeding their greatest imaginable challenges. Lets take a football team that has the challenge of winning all its continental matches. Its focus should be how to hire the best coach, recruit and develop the very best players through scouting and coaching.
For the team to achieve peak performance, the management must look well after the welfare of the team member and motivate them to be passinately committed to the mission of the team. Focus is the breath that keep you going when the going gets tough. One major game plan for peak performance is to painstankingly search for and employ the best hands for your organisation and not just take what is available.And to sustain peak performance again ensures that excellent people are recruited and developed.
Another essential element for nurturiing peak performance is to foster the spirit of family bonding within the organisation. A sense of closely-knitted family where everyone share joy and pains, success and failure, share financial profit. This will promote enthusiasm and security. Where this sort of harmony exists, workers will feel a sense of belonging. They will feel they are contributing to a worthy mission. They will be passionate about what thy do because they will also see it as opportunity to make a difference. Having a great dream and hiring excellent people are not enough to reach peak performance, a tending, physically beautiful environment that nurtures creativity is a very important factor. A clean environment with requisite working tools will motivates and facilitates the workers to exceeds their personal best.
Remember, the fulcrum of peak performance is maximum productivity, output, result, finished product. Such orgnaistion must be a place where idea should be allowed to flourish unhindered. Where information could be shared freely within the organisation but cafefully protected from outsiders. where aworker is not chewed out for his mistakes although mistakes shoud be acknowledged and leaned from. Here inovation can flourish because there will be no fear of mistakes.Here individual worker will take personal responsibility for the organisation seeing to its best in dealing with its clients and delivering its products and services. Let me sound a note of warning here, that peak performance is not a quick fix. It is not easy peak. It involves strategic and collective thinking.
Question: cab an individual, business, organisation or government achieve peak performance? My answer is yes. Because the principles that predicates peak performance are premised on human agency. Again, if peak performance is achieved, can it abate? the answer again is yes. If the mission is lost, focus distorted, infranstruture dismantled. So what should the organisation do to keep the wave flowing? Peak performance could be sustained by continuing applying all the these conceps that have been explained.
Continuing investment in skill development, and seeking out other new, stretching, more rewarding challenges. You see, succes is a continuing process, it is not a destination. the road of succes is always under construction.To me success is the ongoing streching to exceeding imaginable challenges. Always an opportunity to be creative, expand, make a difference, grow spiritually, intellectually and finacially. In a nutshell, peak performance begins with a visionary leader who inspired a dream on a team, creating a family bonding environment to nurture creativity and growth with all participants working towards exceeding the best imaginable challenge and sustaining its shared mission. I therefore challenge you to take these tools, build them as a permanent infranstruture in your life, business, organisation and reap its handsome rewards.
Matthew Oye Arikanki, accra
matthewoye@yahoo.com
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Songwriter, poet,prolific writer and motivatonal speaker, Matthew Oye writes the popular THINK TANK WITH MATTHEW OYE column in the evening news. Matthew has written 14 books (unpublished) and composed over 3,000 choral songs.Matthew is based in Accra, Ghana west africa
