Key milestones and checkpoints along the path to high performance are:

• Clear and compelling reasons for change.
• Balanced focus on people, management and technology.
• Strong ethic for self-determination.
• Clear and compelling vision of your future.
• Three or four core values.
• Definitive statement of purpose, why you exist.
• Rich and continuous customer/partner performance gap data.
• Intense exploring for new markets and customers.
• High levels of innovation through experiments, pilots, and clumsy tries.
• Robust system for team and organizational learning.
• Three or four strategic imperatives for each annual improvement cycle.
• Direct links between strategic imperatives, improvement plans, and activities.
• Comprehensive and balanced improvement plan.
• Improvement planning structure, process, and discipline.
• Clear understanding of preferred types and focus of all teams.
• Well-trained team leaders and members.
• Intense levels of technical, management, and leadership skill development.
• Simple customer/partner, innovation, improvement, and financial measurements.
• Active feedback loops that foster learning and improvement.
• Flat, decentralized, and team-based organizational structure.
• Systems that serve and support customers and partners.
• Extensive and continuous education programs.
• Effective communication strategies, systems, and practices.
• Partner-designed reward and recognition programs within a vibrant appreciation culture.
• Strong development of change champions.
• Support for local initiatives.
• Annual progress reviews and improvement assessments.
• Frequent celebrations of major breakthroughs and small wins.
• Annual refocus and planning next year's improvement cycle.

There are many paths to high performance, each person, team, and organization has to find their own. What works for me or someone else, might be totally wrong for you.

One possible starting point is gathering feedback from your team/partners about the progress and improvement urgency of each of the checkpoints above. Using this data and other forms of feedback (especially customer), you can start to put together your change and improvement plans.

The biggest cause for the failure of change and improvement plans, is managers trying to build a organization that's different from themselves. Pathways to Performance provides a detailed personal checklist. Some of the items are:

• Attempting to change your organization or team without changing yourself.
• Driving for industry or market leadership when you're afflicted with the pessimism plague and/or victimitis virus.
• Supporting high levels of skill development – for everyone else.
• Forcing accountability, performance appraisal, and measurement for others while you defend, avoid, or halfheartedly gather personal feedback.
• Do you want a high performance organization? Are you willing to pay the price? Do you willing to blaze your own path or do you want to follow the herd? It starts with a clear and constant focus on where you are going, what you believe in and why you exist (your three P's - picture, principles and purpose). It also demands another 'p' word, persistence – that 'bull dog determination' to never give up.

What are the rewards? Life - one filled with energy and passion, continuous learning, and skill development, unyielding self-confidence, compassion, and understanding.

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