When organisations talk about performance, the conversation usually begins with results.
Sales.
Profit.
Productivity.
Delivery.
Targets.
But by the time results appear, thousands of individual choices have already been made.
Conversations have either happened or been avoided.
Problems have either been raised or hidden.
Ideas have either been shared or kept to ourselves.
Responsibility has either been accepted or passed to someone else.
Every one of those moments influences performance long before any KPI is measured.
This is why two organisations with similar people, similar resources and similar strategies can achieve very different outcomes.
The difference is often found in the quality of the choices people make every day.
I believe this is where Human Agency becomes one of an organisation’s most valuable resources.
Human Agency is our capacity to make intentional choices.
When people become more aware of their choices, performance improves naturally—not because they are working harder, but because they are making better decisions.
High performance is rarely created by pressure.
It is usually created by thousands of intentional choices that, over time, become part of the way an organisation operates.
Perhaps that’s why the foundations of high performance are laid long before the results appear.
If you’d like to explore these ideas further, I’ve written a paper called Human Agency that examines the subject in much greater depth. It’s available as a free download from my website.
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