University of Virginia professor Jonathan Haidt in his book The Happiness Hypothesis says that our emotional side is an Elephant and our rational side is its Rider. In their book SWITCH Chip and Dan Heath continue the story to teach practitioners important lessons about creating change and executing strategy.

How are the Rider and the Elephant different from each other? Lets look at the main differences.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” “Leaders behave the culture to the organization.”

Culture is both powerful and ambiguous at the same time – as the quotes above indicate. Leaders are fairly well equipped to formulate and execute their strategy – at least when compared to the readiness to address culture. However, as the first quote above states, culture can easily hinder companies from achieving their vision and to execute their strategy. While being aware of this, leaders sometimes find it difficult to address the culture as it is non-tangible– and personal in the light if the second quote above.

Strategy becomes reality if the Performance Leadership Process in the organization is working well. The first question that comes easily to mind is why should we name the key execution process Performance “Leadership”, and not Performance “Management”? Firstly, for engagement and innovation, the performance process should be more about people, their behavior and their development, and less about their results, metrics and the assessment of their performance. Especially dangerous for motivation can be the evaluation of performance for bonuses. Secondly managers should start to act more like coaches and be less like judges and critics. The critical features of a strong strategy execution oriented Performance Leadership Process are discussed below.

Today’s workplaces are experiencing constant change. Working methods, work tasks, processes, workplaces, colleagues and roles change quickly in conjunction with organizational and technological changes. This constant change may overwhelm employees, causing stress and disruptive behavior as employees struggle to keep up with the changes, resist the change or even prevent the change. For an employer this means that it is very important to be able to identify those with the ability to endure and prosper in environments with a high level of change.

Leaders have an essential role in engaging employees and leading them to high performance. With service and knowledge intensive work leadership and coaching employees personally have taken the place of traditional management. In today’s business world leaders have to be able to make the employees willing to give their best for the organization. Performance in knowledge intensive work depends on motivation and individual mental processes.

In these days requirements towards the employer are high. Employees seek
jobs where they can learn and grow professionally. Relationships between
the employer and employee have been changing from a long-term and loyalty
based relationship to a short term and more benefit seeking relationship.