Addicted to Performance

Take a journey down into the inner-workings of organisations as they strive to meet the addiction-fuelled performance expectations of their stakeholders - what they do and what they don't do. Moreover, don't just look through the eyes of success, but look also through the eyes of failure and learn, both from what you see and from what you don't see.



This is what the authors do in Addicted to Performance as they explore what was going on inside a few organisations prior to the occurrence of a major/accident, catastrophe or disaster event. They wanted to know what the leaders were thinking and what the workforce was doing, or for that matter, not doing.



Was there evidence of pressure being exerted on the organisation in some way?



Did the actions of leadership or the organisation's culture, shape or nurture, maybe even create, the environments from which these organisational accidents, catastrophes or disasters emerged?



As the story unfolds, the plight of modern day organisations becomes more and more apparent. They are trapped in the pursuit of the efficiencies necessary to satisfy society's addiction to "more-for-less". Their leaders, as society's proxies, are seemingly unable or unwilling to do anything except follow the herd.

They too, it seems, are trapped. Furthermore, there is no direct or guaranteed way to escape this trap and simply emulating what others have done or are doing will not be enough!



The authors have no ready-made solutions or formulas for securing your organization's future. Rather, their objective is to provoke you into thinking about things a little more and to enhance your understanding of the likely consequences of sustained pressure for greater performance; what will happen and maybe even how it will happen. And if the authors were to suggest a way forward, it would be to broaden your perspectives and to encourage you to explore other ways of doing things, because there are alternatives to simply following the herd.