Three patterns have emerged: some initiatives fail; some get off to a promising start and then lose momentum; a small number launch a process of self-sustaining improvement. What accounts for these different outcomes?

Achieving Outstanding Performance (AOP) focuses on the important distinction between actions necessary to improve performance and those required to sustain it.

Initiatives such as process re-engineering, empowerment and Six Sigma can improve performance. However, contrary to popular myth, there is no ‘new idea’ that will transform it. The truth is more prosaic: outstanding performance depends on doing the right things extraordinarily well. This is difficult to pull off, despite all the components of excellent performance being known to managers.

Disturbingly some performance improvement initiatives are doomed to failure from the start. These represent an enormous waste of time and effort as well as destroy reputations along the way. However, for the executives involved, they obviously made reasonable sense to begin with. The programme looks deeply into these improbable situations from which we can all learn.

• Diagnosing the causes of poor performance

• Understanding how to frame and launch performance improvement initiatives

• Building an inventory of concepts and tools to manage implementation

• Calibrating your own managerial skills

Click here for a synopsis of AOP and other open-enrolment programmes running in Abu Dhabi or download a hard copy.

• Management of People
• International Executive Programme
• International Project Management