Uncovering the Fundamentals of Performance and Commitment

Practical experience and decades of research inform TruePoint’s perspective on the fundamental challenges and success factors in building high-performance, high-commitment organizations. What we’ve learned through the years — as chief executives and researchers, as line managers and consultants — has led us to some inescapable truths, among them:

• Leaders at all levels — not change programs or consultants — create high performance and commitment.
• The best way to sustain economic performance is through unleashing the energies and capabilities of an organization’s people.
• Implementing strategy requires alignment — highly aligned organizations with good strategies consistently outperform poorly aligned organizations with brilliant strategies.
• Businesses and the people inside them don’t learn to change unless they have the courage to confront difficult truths in open, honest conversations.

These and other fundamental principles of business success are documented in TruePoint’s rich body of research and writings. Following are introductions to a representative cross-section of our work, including books as well as our articles from Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, McKinsey Quarterly, and other influential business publications.

• Conversations that Matter introduces “How to Have an Honest Conversation About Your Business Strategy,” a 2004 Harvard Business Review article.
• The Six Silent Killers documents our research in a dozen companies, published in MIT’s Sloan Management Review, identifying six hidden barriers to effective strategy implementation and learning.
• Real Change Leaders, a BusinessWeek bestseller co-authored by TruePoint’s Steven Dichter, identifies and profiles a new breed of middle manager who partners with senior leadership to make change happen.
• Theory E & Theory O explains Michael Beer’s powerful notion — explored in-depth in a 2001 Organizational Dynamics article and in a current Harvard Business School working paper — that transforming organizations requires leaders to embrace the paradox inherent in two competing change strategies.
• Unit-By-Unit Change explains “Why Change Programs Don’t Produce Change” (and what does), the subject of a classic Harvard Business Review article and the landmark book The Critical Path to Corporate Renewal, co-authored by TruePoint’s Michael Beer and Russell Eisenstat.

A more exhaustive reference to published works by TruePoint’s people is provided in Articles & Publications.

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