The Three Laws of Performance:Rewriting the Future of Your Organization and Your Life

When a problem becomes evident, whether it’s in our personal or professional lives, our tendency is to struggle with which part of the problem to tackle first. Do we start with cost reduction? What about morale? Or should we begin with process improvement? We struggle with exactly how we should begin solving the problem in order to achieve success.

However, once we select the problem to work on and how to approach it, a new problem may pop up and replace the old one. For example, cutting 10 percent of a department budget in order to reduce costs may force high performers to leave the company because of a lack of support or growth. Quitting smoking may solve an addiction issue, but may also contribute to weight gain, which becomes another issue. It seems that whenever we attempt to solve one problem, another problem emerges.

In our summary of The Three Laws of Performance: Rewriting the Future of Your Organization and Your Life, by Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan, we'll explain that fixing problems doesn’t always deliver the results we expect because those results are only superficial. What’s left untouched are the underlying dynamics that perpetuate the problem. According to Zaffron and Logan, we need to challenge ourselves to do more than just fix problems. We need to find the power to rewrite our futures.

Zaffron is the CEO of the Vanto Group, a global consulting firm. He has directed major corporate initiatives with more than 300 organizations in 20 countries. Logan is on the faculty at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California and is also senior partner of CultureSync, a management consulting firm.

By following the Three Laws, you'll learn how you can crack the code for rewriting your future, both professionally and personally, in order to elevate your performance to levels that you never thought were possible.