Medicine Wheel

LEADERSHIP
LEADERSHIP is the first and most significant element. Exceptional leadership is recognized as a key element in high performing organizations. Moving an organization from average to exceptional performance require a senior leadership team that not only possesses necessary skills & abilities but also the values, commitment and passion needed to inspire and guide the organization. Effective leadership includes communicating the organization's Mission & Vision, modeling the core values, supporting employees to be successful, and encouraging continuous learning & improvement.

ENVIRONMENT
Anticipating the environmental forces that impact your organization is critical for effective strategic and operational planning and fact-based decision-making. A comprehensive environmental assessment includes both internal and external information about the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) from the perspective of senior leadership, employees and other key stakeholders. Data about customers, operations, strategic outcomes/results, and external factors related to the industry, market, political/government affairs, technology, and competitive environment.

STRATEGY
The strategy guides an organization toward achieving both long term and short-term goals that ensure sustainability and future success. The strategy of an organization should create focus and alignment throughout the organization and assure every employee understands how they contribute. The BEAT is the 4-phase process for developing actionable, measurable strategy and effectively executing it.

CUSTOMERS
Exceptional organizations work hard to meet or exceed their customer's expectations and deliver quality services that lead to high levels of satisfaction and customer loyalty. Achieving these aims requires an in-depth understanding of your customers and what products and services are core to best serving them.

KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING
An organization that is committed to continuously building knowledge and learning at the individual employee and organization-wide level is better prepared to face the future and achieve desired results. Learning organizations set themselves apart by using knowledge of current performance and past experience to support fact based decision-making, ongoing cycles of improvement, and innovation. The Active Learning Cycle is a philosophy that embeds continuous cycles of learning and improving as a part of an organization's culture.

PEOPLE
Your people are your most important resource for achieving your Mission & Vision. Highly successful organizations assure their employees have the necessary tools, information and support for their success. Developing a dynamic culture of empowerment, personal learning and cycles of improvement and innovation are key values. 2-way communication, customer focus and employee recognition are role modeled by leadership.

PROCESSES
The first step in achieving exceptional performance is to understand that all work is a process. Optimizing the performance of existing processes and designing new processes well is how organizations move from ordinary to exceptional. "Process management" means actively taking action to ensure that processes work well within the bigger systems perspective. This is effectively achieved by embedding the concepts of the Active Learning cycle.

RESULTS

Element Overview
An organization's success is determined ultimately by the results it achieves. Measuring key outcomes related to your core business and strategy is critical to know where you've been and where you're going.

Many highly successful organizations have a balanced set of measures that track outcomes against targets for customers, financial, key processes and employee support. Results are evaluated from the standpoint of Active learning cycles to insure ongoing improvement and learning.