1) Five key factors contribute to a high performance organization: quality management, openness, readiness for action, long-term focus, and continuous employee improvement. High performing employees are focused on customers, quality, and improvement and inspire collaboration. 2) Narrow job descriptions can lead to "acquired dependency" where employees avoid risks and wait for permission. Getting employees out of their comfort zone with challenges can enhance innovation. 3) High performance individuals exhibit new behaviors like openness, action-orientation, entrepreneurship, collaboration and results. Combining work and learning helps develop these behaviors.

1. The High Performance Organization & Darwin
Five factors matter to becoming a High Performance Organization (HPO): quality of
management, openness, readiness to take action, long-term focus and continuous
improvement of employees. In a HPO, employees must be high performing individuals
(HPI): focused on customers, quality and continuous improvement, inspiring each other to
collaborate to achieve excellent results. HPI employees take ownership and are accountable
for their results.
Out of the comfort zone: make your job a challenge!
That sounds great – but corporate reality often looks a
little different. Employees tend to have narrow job
descriptions because a lot of organizations are
designed by Frederick Taylor’s principles. A rational
division of labor and jobs makes organizations look
efficient and effective and provides management with
a feeling of control. But is that true?
Narrow job descriptions and controlling managers
cause “acquired dependency”, avoiding risks and
waiting for permission. The Taylorian organization leads to waste of employees’ creative and
innovative potential.
Research (Quelette & Wood, 1998) shows that when challenge in your job is lacking, “new
behaviors” are soon replaced by “old behaviors” like dependency on your boss. Darwin stated
that humans need challenges to stay strong and vital (The Descent of Man). It is important to
get your employees out of their comfort zones and expose them to some positive challenges
regarding organizational change…! Stimulate them to think for themselves, develop
improvements and behave in a more entrepreneurial way at work. A great way to do this is to
combine working with practical learning.
High Performance Individuals – from followers to leaders
What you ultimately need to become a High Performance Organization are new behaviors,
like openness (sharing information and speaking your mind – also when you disagree),
readiness for action (not just talking about it, but doing what you have planned),
entrepreneurship (seeing opportunities and experimenting or taking risks), collaboration
(communicating well, allowing others to do their thing, fine tuning your work to facilitate
colleagues) and achieving results, getting things done!
Combining daily work with learning these new behaviors can enhance commitment and
employee engagement. In these times of unpredictable and heavy competition, organizations
need employees who can handle complexity, dynamics at a high pace and uncertainty. We
need highly skilled employees but also collaboration, creativity and results-oriented working.
The only way to develop the new behaviors in today’s busy and unpredictable workplace is
learning by doing. You can’t control this in a school curriculum. You have to use trial and
error to see what works in your organization.
Four Qualities of High Performance Individuals
Meta-research on human behavior by Harvard professors Lawrence and Nohria (Driven,
2001) shows that humans need to develop four drivers to survive. This theory is grounded on
Darwin and is called the Renewed Darwinian Theory of Human Behavior.

2. The four drivers of human behavior are:
1. The drive to acquire
2. The drive for security
3. The drive to learn
4. The drive to belong
Darwin describes these drivers as critical factors to survival. They are also recognizable in
the Competing Values Framework on which the OCAI culture survey is based. Based on the
four behavior drivers, people develop these competencies:
1. Business & Goal-oriented competencies (wanting to win, Market culture)
2. Planning & Procedure-oriented competencies (wanting security, Hierarchy culture)
3. Self-organizing & Creative competencies (learning by trial and error and improvising,
Adhocracy culture)
4. People & Motivation competencies (wanting to collaborate and relate, Clan culture)
Mostly, 1-2 competencies are present by nature: This is everyone’s personal comfort zone or
your core competencies. The other competencies are not developed: They are your “allergy”
when you encounter them in others or they could be your challenge (you’d like to learn them
but it doesn’t feel natural).
High Performance Individuals are “four of a kind”: They are able to switch between the four
competencies depending on the situation. They have developed all four and will show them
in behavior when necessary.
The same underlying thought – develop these four styles – grounds organizational
development. Utilizing the OCAI tool to assess current and preferred culture, the outcome
shows how your organization has developed these four competencies and whether the balance
is right or not (yet). In alignment with the Renewed Darwinian Theory of Human Behavior,
Cameron and Quinn also found from their research that highly successful organizations are
able to show competing behaviors and switch between the four culture types, leadership
styles etc., when necessary. They can show contradictory behavior in response to situations.
In response to the Taylorian division of labor and the 19th
century industrial management,
today’s highly educated professionals working in unpredictable, complex and fast-changing
environments, vote for corporate cultures that are based on Self-organizing & Creative
competencies (learning by trial and error and improvising, Adhocracy culture) and People &
Motivation competencies (wanting to collaborate and relate, Clan culture). They need
professional freedom beyond narrow job descriptions as well as accountability to achieve
results on time (instead of waiting for permission), they need trial and error, and the freedom
to excel and deviate when necessary, while providing their complex services and products
and satisfying customer needs. If they are true professionals, they will like the challenge to
develop all four competencies to be ready for whatever comes their way…
Comfort zones are less and less likely to endure – and they get smaller all the time. Thinking
and acting out of the box is the new normal.
The good thing about the OCAI tool is its great starting point for change, leading to engaging
workshops with participants (employees, executives, professionals) where people learn to let
go of their “acquired dependency” and take ownership of the change. I’m looking forward to
all those High Performance Organizations that will emerge…!

3. Jan den Breejen, CM is a Dutch program manager at ISBW (Schouten & Nelissen Global)
and the author of the book ´De High Performance Organisatie: een integrale aanpak.
Management van leren en veranderen’ (Kluwer, 2009). Sorry - book is only available in
Dutch.