A series of opening statements on recent geopolitical, economic, and social developments affecting organizations and how their leaders think about “high performance”

The first key to raising performance is to clearly define the objective—and stay laser-focused on what it takes to reach it. Are leaders and organizations seeing their attention torn into too many directions in the current volatile environment? How do they reach consensus on what really matters?

Attracting and retaining top talent have never been harder. To get the people you need, do you need to ease up on performance demands? How do you get both high engagement and high performance? How can you create what Peter Drucker called the “spirit of performance?” In what organizations do we see it today? How can you fuel more of it?

Knowledge workers were abruptly pushed into the world of remote work in 2020, and many have no desire to go back to life as it was. As managers struggle with people’s different desires for work at home, collegial office life, and maximum flexibility, how must performance management evolve?

So many qualities are talked about in leadership: resilience, from resilience and agility to vision and integrity. Which of these capacities are most often lacking in managers? How do you realize more of your potential to have impact? What do the best coaches actually build in their clients?

Drucker had a lot to say about performance. Here are the major themes. Are his perspectives still valid? What, if anything, would he add (or subtract) today?

Creative friction or close friends? Colocated or virtual? Stable or changing? Using human capital analytics, researchers and large employers are discovering the keys to high performance at the project and team level – and the tradeoffs that can make for some difficult decisions.

It’s been said that “what can’t be measured can’t be managed.” Yet so much of what matters to stakeholders is impossible to gauge in consistent, disciplined ways. Where does this leave us?