SUPERPERFORMANCE

A step-by-step handbook for improving corporate team performance.

“Superperformers help us raise the water for everyone,” writes nonprofit founder Pesansky in his nonfiction debut. “They’re the rising tide that lifts all boats.” To cultivate such superperformers, train them, and encourage them, the author advocates the corporate implementation of something he refers to as an “improvement factory” in every organization. In these pages, he outlines eight key strategies for achieving superperformance: readers are encouraged to avoid the rigidity of pre-set expectations; emphasize real collaboration over individual effort; keep an eye on the big picture; build a toolbox “that can provide an endless supply of focusing questions”; learn to spot waste; move from problem-solving to success-spotting; look at improvement as a skill to be honed constantly; and always consider the things that can’t be measured (“progress requires improving at a rate faster than the last changes we made”). In the ensuing chapters, Pesansky fleshes out these somewhat vague concepts into working ideas, emphasizing “avoiding dilution” by staying focused on the things that matter, the resources at hand, and the time available rather than getting bogged down paying disproportionate amounts of attention to issues offering far less return on the time invested. He effectively illuminates these discussions with charts, illustrations, and a collection of endnotes for further reading. Some of the author’s precepts remain untenably vague even after elaboration, and he’s prone to some of the nonsense-speak that tends to fill business books: “It’s not how you can walk the walk or how you can talk the talk. It’s how you can walk the talk.” Fortunately, Pesansky’s energetic optimism makes up for this at every turn; he ultimately comes across as the kind of HR development coach you wish your company had.

A sometimes vague but encouraging call to supercharge team performance in business.