Home » The HPO Knowledge Center » The 5 HPO Factors
The Five Factors That Really Make Organizations High Performing
The five HPO factors are described below. Before continuing, we recommend that you first read this brief explanation by Dr. André de Waal.
The factors that determine what makes an organization an HPO: an organization that achieves better financial and non-financial results than comparable organizations over a period of at least five to 10 years are in brief:
- Management Quality
The management of an HPO is high-quality and combines integrity and coaching leadership with fast decision-making. - Openness and Action Orientation
The culture of an HPO intensively involves everyone through dialog and actions aimed at achieving better performance. - Long-Term Orientation
The long-term orientation of an HPO applies to customers and cooperation partners but also to employees. Management is supplemented by promotions from the inside out. - Continuous Improvement and Renewal
An HPO knows its distinguishing characteristics in the market and allows all employees to continuously contribute to improving the organization's processes, services and products. - Quality of Employees
The employees on an HPO are diverse, complementary and work together well. They are flexible and resilient in their focus on achieving the intended result.
Below you find the HPO Factors in further detail:
Management Quality
The management of an HPO is high-quality and combines integrity and coaching leadership with fast decision-making.
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The management of an HPO is high-quality and combines integrity and coaching leadership with fast decision-making.
Lees verder »Management Quality
Aspects of management quality
The first and most important factor that determines whether an organization is and remains an HPO is the quality of the organization’s management. The management in an HPO combines many qualities and that is what makes it such a challenge to become a real HPO manager. This first HPO factor has 12 characteristics.
Managers of an HPO build a strong relationship of trust with employees at all levels of the organization by respecting them, listening to them, asking them for help, learning from them, devoting a lot of time to developing and maintaining personal relationships with them, expressing faith and trust in them, treating them as smart people, focusing on openness and honesty in all interactions with members of the organization, giving credit where credit is due, only criticizing them during bilateral discussions and always being available to them.
Managers of an HPO have integrity by being honest and sincere, having strong ethical standards and values and also promoting these standards and values in other members of the organization, being trustworthy and consistent, not trying to be popular at the expense of everything else and creating agreement between words and actions by leading by example.
Managers of an HPO have a strong exemplary role by showing involvement, enthusiasm and respect, showing their vulnerability, not being arrogant, asking for deviating opinions, not concentrating on the negative, not being detached, publicly committing to objectives they wish to achieve, working hard themselves and being persistent when things are going against them.
Managers of an HPO are decisive by not overanalyzing but taking sufficient time to make good decisions about effective actions, immediately intervening in the event of problems, keeping in mind the short-term as well as the long-term interests of the organization for each important decision and being able to think outside of the box.
Managers of an HPO are action-oriented by being bold when they need to be, inspiring members of the organization to action, always tracking the course and results of actions and reviewing each decision made and action implemented in order to learn from them.
Managers of an HPO coach and facilitate members of the organization by being supportive and encouraging, helping them and protecting them from disrupting external influences, being available to them and not telling them how they should achieve their objectives but giving them fast, direct feedback about their performance.
Managers of an HPO are strongly focused on achieving results by continuously working visibly for the organization as regards achieving the set objectives, proactively finding and using opportunities to achieve a competitive advantage for the organization or making the organization more efficient and developing intolerance for mediocrity.
Managers of an HPO are effective in everything they do by continuously searching for the best way of doing things, resolving conflicts in a constructive manner, proactively dealing with issues before they turn into real problems and ignoring unimportant issues by remaining focused on that which is really relevant to the organization.
Managers of an HPO develop a strong leadership style by continuously propagating the organization’s values, checking whether employees are receiving and understanding the strategic message, continuously sharing their vision with members of the organization and being a strong leader in difficult times.
Managers of an HPO are self-confident by exhibiting the right combination of modesty and professionalism, presenting themselves as being at people’s service instead of being in a leading role, knowing themselves, recognizing their own strengths and limitations, continuing to learn and being authentic, self-assured, disciplined and emotionally strong.
Managers of an HPO always hold members of the organization accountable for their results by giving the employees the responsibility for performing well, clarifying responsibilities and the associated expected performance, subsequently holding members of the organization (both employees as well as fellow managers) personally accountable for achieving the agreed-upon results, letting them know and see what the consequences are if the agreed-upon results are not achieved and themselves being responsible for their own results.
Managers of an HPO are decisive as regards “non-performers” by consistently evaluating members of the organization as regards their achieve results, not wavering in taking difficult decisions, and not allowing non-performing members of the organization to “muddle on” too long but helping them find a new position within or outside of the organization.
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Aspects of management quality
The first and most important factor that determines whether an organization is and remains an HPO is the quality of the organization’s management. The management in an HPO combines many qualities and that is what makes it such a challenge to become a real HPO manager. This first HPO factor has 12 characteristics.
Managers of an HPO build a strong relationship of trust with employees at all levels of the organization by respecting them, listening to them, asking them for help, learning from them, devoting a lot of time to developing and maintaining personal relationships with them, expressing faith and trust in them, treating them as smart people, focusing on openness and honesty in all interactions with members of the organization, giving credit where credit is due, only criticizing them during bilateral discussions and always being available to them.
Managers of an HPO have integrity by being honest and sincere, having strong ethical standards and values and also promoting these standards and values in other members of the organization, being trustworthy and consistent, not trying to be popular at the expense of everything else and creating agreement between words and actions by leading by example.
Managers of an HPO have a strong exemplary role by showing involvement, enthusiasm and respect, showing their vulnerability, not being arrogant, asking for deviating opinions, not concentrating on the negative, not being detached, publicly committing to objectives they wish to achieve, working hard themselves and being persistent when things are going against them.
Managers of an HPO are decisive by not overanalyzing but taking sufficient time to make good decisions about effective actions, immediately intervening in the event of problems, keeping in mind the short-term as well as the long-term interests of the organization for each important decision and being able to think outside of the box.
Managers of an HPO are action-oriented by being bold when they need to be, inspiring members of the organization to action, always tracking the course and results of actions and reviewing each decision made and action implemented in order to learn from them.
Managers of an HPO coach and facilitate members of the organization by being supportive and encouraging, helping them and protecting them from disrupting external influences, being available to them and not telling them how they should achieve their objectives but giving them fast, direct feedback about their performance.
Managers of an HPO are strongly focused on achieving results by continuously working visibly for the organization as regards achieving the set objectives, proactively finding and using opportunities to achieve a competitive advantage for the organization or making the organization more efficient and developing intolerance for mediocrity.
Managers of an HPO are effective in everything they do by continuously searching for the best way of doing things, resolving conflicts in a constructive manner, proactively dealing with issues before they turn into real problems and ignoring unimportant issues by remaining focused on that which is really relevant to the organization.
Managers of an HPO develop a strong leadership style by continuously propagating the organization’s values, checking whether employees are receiving and understanding the strategic message, continuously sharing their vision with members of the organization and being a strong leader in difficult times.
Managers of an HPO are self-confident by exhibiting the right combination of modesty and professionalism, presenting themselves as being at people’s service instead of being in a leading role, knowing themselves, recognizing their own strengths and limitations, continuing to learn and being authentic, self-assured, disciplined and emotionally strong.
Managers of an HPO always hold members of the organization accountable for their results by giving the employees the responsibility for performing well, clarifying responsibilities and the associated expected performance, subsequently holding members of the organization (both employees as well as fellow managers) personally accountable for achieving the agreed-upon results, letting them know and see what the consequences are if the agreed-upon results are not achieved and themselves being responsible for their own results.
Managers of an HPO are decisive as regards “non-performers” by consistently evaluating members of the organization as regards their achieve results, not wavering in taking difficult decisions, and not allowing non-performing members of the organization to “muddle on” too long but helping them find a new position within or outside of the organization.
BackOpenness and Action Orientation
Openness and Action Orientation
The culture of an HPO intensively involves everyone through dialog and actions aimed at achieving better performance.
Lees verder »
Openness and Action Orientation
The culture of an HPO intensively involves everyone through dialog and actions aimed at achieving better performance.
Lees verder »Openness and Action Orientation
Aspects of openness and action orientation
The HPO factor that emerged from the study is an open, action-oriented organizational culture. In an HPO everyone devotes much time and attention to communication, exchange of knowledge and learning in order to think of new ideas with which he or she can continuously improve his or her work in order to bring the organization to a higher level. This HPO factor has six characteristics.
Managers of an HPO stimulate interactive internal communication ("an open dialog") with the members of the organization so that free and continuous vertical information exchange can take place and everyone can express themselves, create a simple and flat organization, develop new communication channels, stress the importance of informal contacts, regard communication as a responsibility of senior management and propagate what the strategy and achieved results are.
Members of an HPO devote a lot of time to sharing information, knowledge and best practices within the entire organization so that free and continuous horizontal information exchange takes place, a culture of transparency, openness and trust is created, mutual understanding is promoted, integrity and openness in all interactions with others prevails, cooperation with others is furthered and the use of new ideas and knowledge is stimulated.
Managers of an HPO involve members of the organization in important business processes such as developing a vision and organizational values, interactive discussions about strategy and the decision-making process and shaping the future of the organization together with members of the organization, which creates an adult relationship between employees and management.
Managers of an HPO allow for the making of mistakes by letting members of the organization take risks and letting them experiment, regarding mistakes as opportunities to learn, being tolerant of failure and setbacks, not punishing the bearers of bad news but rather rewarding them, reprimanding people who cover up mistakes and themselves experimenting and taking risks.
Managers of an HPO stimulate and welcome change and improvement by continuously striving for renewal, intentionally further developing their own flexibility and that of members of the organization, being agents of change, always supporting renewal and creativity and being visibly involved in this personally and for the organization.
An HPO has a performance-oriented culture, combats inertia and complacency, creates a winning way of thinking (mindset), sets up the organization so that it can excel in everything it does, stimulates members of the organization to get the best from themselves, their people and their organizational unit so that a mutual strategic mindset is created at all organizational units and everyone understands how individual members of the organization, teams, departments and divisions can contribute to the excellence of an organization.
Back
Aspects of openness and action orientation
The HPO factor that emerged from the study is an open, action-oriented organizational culture. In an HPO everyone devotes much time and attention to communication, exchange of knowledge and learning in order to think of new ideas with which he or she can continuously improve his or her work in order to bring the organization to a higher level. This HPO factor has six characteristics.
Managers of an HPO stimulate interactive internal communication ("an open dialog") with the members of the organization so that free and continuous vertical information exchange can take place and everyone can express themselves, create a simple and flat organization, develop new communication channels, stress the importance of informal contacts, regard communication as a responsibility of senior management and propagate what the strategy and achieved results are.
Members of an HPO devote a lot of time to sharing information, knowledge and best practices within the entire organization so that free and continuous horizontal information exchange takes place, a culture of transparency, openness and trust is created, mutual understanding is promoted, integrity and openness in all interactions with others prevails, cooperation with others is furthered and the use of new ideas and knowledge is stimulated.
Managers of an HPO involve members of the organization in important business processes such as developing a vision and organizational values, interactive discussions about strategy and the decision-making process and shaping the future of the organization together with members of the organization, which creates an adult relationship between employees and management.
Managers of an HPO allow for the making of mistakes by letting members of the organization take risks and letting them experiment, regarding mistakes as opportunities to learn, being tolerant of failure and setbacks, not punishing the bearers of bad news but rather rewarding them, reprimanding people who cover up mistakes and themselves experimenting and taking risks.
Managers of an HPO stimulate and welcome change and improvement by continuously striving for renewal, intentionally further developing their own flexibility and that of members of the organization, being agents of change, always supporting renewal and creativity and being visibly involved in this personally and for the organization.
An HPO has a performance-oriented culture, combats inertia and complacency, creates a winning way of thinking (mindset), sets up the organization so that it can excel in everything it does, stimulates members of the organization to get the best from themselves, their people and their organizational unit so that a mutual strategic mindset is created at all organizational units and everyone understands how individual members of the organization, teams, departments and divisions can contribute to the excellence of an organization.
BackLong-Term Orientation
The long-term orientation of an HPO applies to customers and cooperation partners but also to employees. Management is supplemented by promotions from the inside out.
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The long-term orientation of an HPO applies to customers and cooperation partners but also to employees. Management is supplemented by promotions from the inside out.
Lees verder »Long-Term Orientation
Aspects of long-term orientation
This HPO factor is the long-term mindset of an organization: long-term continuity always comes before short-term profit at an HPO. The long-term mindset focuses on all interested parties of an organization: customers, society, suppliers, employees, the government, social groupings - everyone benefits. This HPO factor has six characteristics.
Managers of an HPO commit themselves to the organization for the long term by placing the needs of the organization first, balancing out their own interest with that of the organization and encouraging members of the organization to do the same, practicing good stewardship of the organization, urging long-term relationships and members of the organization to not only concentrate on short-term tasks but also on development opportunities for the long term and to focus on the survival of the company.
An HPO promotes new management from within by filling open positions with internal talent, giving preference to internal promotion over hiring external people, encouraging and challenging members of the organization to become leaders, carefully hiring people for their ambition, energy, perseverance and ability to inspire, creating job rotation and development programs and discovering high-potential people and letting them work at promising business opportunities so that they can show their worth.
An HPO creates a safe and stable work environment for members of the organization by giving them a feeling of safety (both physical as well as mental), guaranteeing them as much job security as possible and only firing people when there is no other way and striving for low employee turnover by making employees (emotionally) loyal to the organization as long as possible.
An HPO creates growth through cooperation with other organizations in the form of virtual integration with suppliers and customers by consistently seeking opportunities for alliances and partnerships and by streamlining the vision, strategy and processes and gearing these to the partners so that and (international) network can be established.
An HPO maintains good long-term relationships with all stakeholders by developing a large network, being generous to society by financially investing in the local economy, developing win-win relationships with interested parties, concentrating on corporate social responsibility or on social business management, knowing and understanding the wishes and needs of the interested parties and gearing these wishes and needs to each other and including them when determining the strategy and objectives of the organization.
An HPO continuously strives to increase added value for its customers by always remaining aware of customer wishes, knowing their values and motives, maintaining excellent relationships with them, having direct contact with them and regularly asking for feedback, involving them in the organization and its trials and tribulations, being open to them, continuously focusing on what added value is or can be for them and coordinating the strategy and objectives with the demands of the external environment so that organizational renewal is always aimed at consistently better fulfilling customer requirements and increasing their loyalty.
Back
Aspects of long-term orientation
This HPO factor is the long-term mindset of an organization: long-term continuity always comes before short-term profit at an HPO. The long-term mindset focuses on all interested parties of an organization: customers, society, suppliers, employees, the government, social groupings - everyone benefits. This HPO factor has six characteristics.
Managers of an HPO commit themselves to the organization for the long term by placing the needs of the organization first, balancing out their own interest with that of the organization and encouraging members of the organization to do the same, practicing good stewardship of the organization, urging long-term relationships and members of the organization to not only concentrate on short-term tasks but also on development opportunities for the long term and to focus on the survival of the company.
An HPO promotes new management from within by filling open positions with internal talent, giving preference to internal promotion over hiring external people, encouraging and challenging members of the organization to become leaders, carefully hiring people for their ambition, energy, perseverance and ability to inspire, creating job rotation and development programs and discovering high-potential people and letting them work at promising business opportunities so that they can show their worth.
An HPO creates a safe and stable work environment for members of the organization by giving them a feeling of safety (both physical as well as mental), guaranteeing them as much job security as possible and only firing people when there is no other way and striving for low employee turnover by making employees (emotionally) loyal to the organization as long as possible.
An HPO creates growth through cooperation with other organizations in the form of virtual integration with suppliers and customers by consistently seeking opportunities for alliances and partnerships and by streamlining the vision, strategy and processes and gearing these to the partners so that and (international) network can be established.
An HPO maintains good long-term relationships with all stakeholders by developing a large network, being generous to society by financially investing in the local economy, developing win-win relationships with interested parties, concentrating on corporate social responsibility or on social business management, knowing and understanding the wishes and needs of the interested parties and gearing these wishes and needs to each other and including them when determining the strategy and objectives of the organization.
An HPO continuously strives to increase added value for its customers by always remaining aware of customer wishes, knowing their values and motives, maintaining excellent relationships with them, having direct contact with them and regularly asking for feedback, involving them in the organization and its trials and tribulations, being open to them, continuously focusing on what added value is or can be for them and coordinating the strategy and objectives with the demands of the external environment so that organizational renewal is always aimed at consistently better fulfilling customer requirements and increasing their loyalty.
BackContinuous Improvement and Renewal
An HPO knows its distinguishing characteristics in the market and allows all employees to continuously contribute to improving the organization's processes, services and products.
Lees verder »
An HPO knows its distinguishing characteristics in the market and allows all employees to continuously contribute to improving the organization's processes, services and products.
Lees verder »Continuous Improvement and Renewal
Aspects of continuous improvement and renewal
This factor, which determines whether an organization is and will remain an HPO, is constant improvement and renewal, or innovation. In an HPO all employees feel the moral obligation to always strive to obtain the optimal result and to get the best out of themselves, their colleagues and the organization. This HPO factor has eight characteristics.
An HPO has a strategy that clearly distinguishes the organization from the competition or from comparable organizations by continually researching and testing many new options and alternatives, specifically seeking strategies with a high risk and high yields, abandoning outdated strategies on time and letting customers and employees clearly feel the difference.
An HPO continuously improves processes by eliminating unnecessary procedures and work and all forms of information excess and by becoming very good in quickly designing and implementing new work methods.
An HPO continuously simplifies processes by standardizing them, removing bottlenecks and making processes as simple as possible and continuously searching for opportunities for constructive re-engineering.
An HPO attunes processes to each other by having as few instances of transfer as possible between processes and striving for one-time input of information.
An HPO measures and reports on that which is important for the organization thereby - based on a good and clear business model - scrupulously measuring the progress of the organization, consistently translating the business model into objectives and goals at lower organizational levels, consistently verifying that objectives are being met, seeing the hard facts and creating a performance-oriented culture at all organizational levels that is focused on results (output) and not on effort (process) and resources (input).
An HPO reports to the members of the organization the financial and non-financial information they need in order to improve so that all employees can come to logical conclusions and improvement measures and can implement these in a disciplined manner, learn from direct and indirect results and side-effects of that which was done in the past, learn from each other by everyone's results being transparent, continuously incorporate improvement in everything they do and allow facts to prevail over opinions and emotions.
An HPO excels in its core competencies and continuously renews these by determining what the organization does best and concentrating on further developing its core competencies within the organization and outsourcing non-core competencies, only starting up new activities that are complementary to the core activities and strengths of the organization, creating a balanced portfolio and quickly disposing of loss-incurring organizational units or activities and training people in the core competencies.
An HPO continuously renews products, services and processes by always discovering and quickly developing new sources of competitive advantage, through which the organization can not only comply with changing market requirements but can also anticipate them, continuously seeking improvements in existing products (incremental improvement) as well as entirely new products, services and processes (abrupt improvement) and by encouraging members of the organization to (further) develop, maintain and renew individual competencies in order to make innovation a core competency of the organization.
Back
Aspects of continuous improvement and renewal
This factor, which determines whether an organization is and will remain an HPO, is constant improvement and renewal, or innovation. In an HPO all employees feel the moral obligation to always strive to obtain the optimal result and to get the best out of themselves, their colleagues and the organization. This HPO factor has eight characteristics.
An HPO has a strategy that clearly distinguishes the organization from the competition or from comparable organizations by continually researching and testing many new options and alternatives, specifically seeking strategies with a high risk and high yields, abandoning outdated strategies on time and letting customers and employees clearly feel the difference.
An HPO continuously improves processes by eliminating unnecessary procedures and work and all forms of information excess and by becoming very good in quickly designing and implementing new work methods.
An HPO continuously simplifies processes by standardizing them, removing bottlenecks and making processes as simple as possible and continuously searching for opportunities for constructive re-engineering.
An HPO attunes processes to each other by having as few instances of transfer as possible between processes and striving for one-time input of information.
An HPO measures and reports on that which is important for the organization thereby - based on a good and clear business model - scrupulously measuring the progress of the organization, consistently translating the business model into objectives and goals at lower organizational levels, consistently verifying that objectives are being met, seeing the hard facts and creating a performance-oriented culture at all organizational levels that is focused on results (output) and not on effort (process) and resources (input).
An HPO reports to the members of the organization the financial and non-financial information they need in order to improve so that all employees can come to logical conclusions and improvement measures and can implement these in a disciplined manner, learn from direct and indirect results and side-effects of that which was done in the past, learn from each other by everyone's results being transparent, continuously incorporate improvement in everything they do and allow facts to prevail over opinions and emotions.
An HPO excels in its core competencies and continuously renews these by determining what the organization does best and concentrating on further developing its core competencies within the organization and outsourcing non-core competencies, only starting up new activities that are complementary to the core activities and strengths of the organization, creating a balanced portfolio and quickly disposing of loss-incurring organizational units or activities and training people in the core competencies.
An HPO continuously renews products, services and processes by always discovering and quickly developing new sources of competitive advantage, through which the organization can not only comply with changing market requirements but can also anticipate them, continuously seeking improvements in existing products (incremental improvement) as well as entirely new products, services and processes (abrupt improvement) and by encouraging members of the organization to (further) develop, maintain and renew individual competencies in order to make innovation a core competency of the organization.
BackQuality of Employees
The employees on an HPO are diverse, complementary and work together well. They are flexible and resilient in their focus on achieving the intended result.
Lees verder »
The employees on an HPO are diverse, complementary and work together well. They are flexible and resilient in their focus on achieving the intended result.
Lees verder »Quality of Employees
Aspects of high-quality employees
Linked to the first HPO factor - high management quality - this HPO factor is the quality of employees. This HPO factor has four characteristics.
Members of an HPO always want to be held accountable for their results by regarding the responsibility to perform well as their own responsibility, ensuring that their responsibilities and the associated expected performance are clear and accepting that they are held responsible for their performance under all circumstances.
Members of an HPO want to be inspired to achieve exceptional results by managers inspiring them to do their very best, individual initiative being promoted, the members of the organization being allowed to be proud of their results and those of the organization and the organization stimulating self-confidence, an entrepreneurial sprit, a mutual mindset and determination in members of the organization.
An HPO has a diverse and complementary management team and group of employees, thereby having creativity with which complex situations and bottlenecks in the operation can be resolved, ensuring that members of the organization differ in their talents, experiences, backgrounds, personalities and skills, stimulating and rewarding people's creativity, using various hiring procedures and methods to reach various types of people and ensuring that complementariness and diversity in experience, knowledge and attitude can be found in each team.
An HPO trains members of the organization in increasing their flexibility and resilience, ensures that members of the organization can deal with uncertainties and changes in their surroundings and even welcome these changes, trains members of the organization to never give up in the event of setbacks but to always seek out new ways of achieving the set goals, searches for new employees who previously appeared to be able to deal with uncertainty and see opportunities and possibilities in this uncertainty and learns from the past and applies lessons learned in order to change.
Back
Aspects of high-quality employees
Linked to the first HPO factor - high management quality - this HPO factor is the quality of employees. This HPO factor has four characteristics.
Members of an HPO always want to be held accountable for their results by regarding the responsibility to perform well as their own responsibility, ensuring that their responsibilities and the associated expected performance are clear and accepting that they are held responsible for their performance under all circumstances.
Members of an HPO want to be inspired to achieve exceptional results by managers inspiring them to do their very best, individual initiative being promoted, the members of the organization being allowed to be proud of their results and those of the organization and the organization stimulating self-confidence, an entrepreneurial sprit, a mutual mindset and determination in members of the organization.
An HPO has a diverse and complementary management team and group of employees, thereby having creativity with which complex situations and bottlenecks in the operation can be resolved, ensuring that members of the organization differ in their talents, experiences, backgrounds, personalities and skills, stimulating and rewarding people's creativity, using various hiring procedures and methods to reach various types of people and ensuring that complementariness and diversity in experience, knowledge and attitude can be found in each team.
An HPO trains members of the organization in increasing their flexibility and resilience, ensures that members of the organization can deal with uncertainties and changes in their surroundings and even welcome these changes, trains members of the organization to never give up in the event of setbacks but to always seek out new ways of achieving the set goals, searches for new employees who previously appeared to be able to deal with uncertainty and see opportunities and possibilities in this uncertainty and learns from the past and applies lessons learned in order to change.
Back