High Performance Organizations

Companies that are starting off in today's business world face many problems in the path to their success. While there are many different ways to run a company, companies that learn how to become high performance teams have a better chance of success. A high performance team (HPO) is "designed to bring out the best in people and achieve sustained high performance." ( Schermerhorn, 2003.) By maximizing the ability of their team to do their best and achieve higher performance levels, managers maximize their chances of success. HPO'S emphasize respect for people.

High performance organizations organize their workflow around five specific areas, and follow policies that "enhance employee flexibility, skills and motivation" (Schermerhorn, 2003).Those five areas are employee involvement, self-directing work teams, integrated production technology, total quality management and organizational learning.

Employee involvement is important to an HPO because it shows how much decision making is actually done by employees. There are three basic levels of employee involvement. The first is no involvement; essentially, they come to work, do their jobs, and don't make any suggestions on any topic. These employees may drop off anonymous tips in suggestion boxes, or participate in roundtable discussions, but they don't participate in the process for making decisions that affect the company. The next level is moderate involvement. In this level there are more opportunities for day-to-day decision making. The last level is high involvement. These employees make decisions daily that involve the welfare of the company.

Self directing work teams are empowered teams that are encouraged to plan, do, and evaluate their work. These teams are important to an HPO because they know how to constructively criticize and increase their skill levels. Allowing employees to self-direct gives them confidence in their abilities, and encourages them to try new and improved methods. By allowing employees to examine their own productivity and come up with plans to increase it, companies are using the source of the productivity to raise ideas for how to improve it. This is important because employee expertise and knowledge can help to examine issues in ways that someone who doesn't do the job couldn't understand. "Self-directing teams strongly affect employee satisfaction and commitment and moderately affect performance" (Schermerhorn, 2003).

Integrated production technology is essential to an HPO because all organizations use technology. They use it to "combine the resources, knowledge and techniques and create a product or service output" (Schermerhorn, 2003). Two of the key components in integrated technologies are the "use of just-in-time production or service systems, and a heavy emphasis on computers to assist in designing products or services, controlling equipment in production processes and integrating the business functions" (Schermerhorn, 2003). The use of just-in-time systems involves companies working closely with suppliers to make sure they have just the right amount of material to finish the job. This is effective because it leads to less waste.

Organizational learning is an important part of an HPO. They "integrate information