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

"The Three Laws of Performance" sets out to teach us how to cast away our past assumptions, our past history, and our past fears, so that we open the door to a fresh future.

Sounds a little New Age, right? Well, the authors give us plenty of real world examples to prove that if we apply their advice, the results can be dramatic. Readers will be impressed by the high-caliber companies the authors have worked with, and the amazing results that came about from using these three laws of performance.

The authors focus their attention on companies, of course, but they also spend time showing us how we can use these laws in our personal lives. Because of the wide-reaching application of these concepts, anyone looking to improve their performance can find value in this book.

Now we have to give you a heads up here. This book is not set up with tips, or tools, or bullet points. The three laws the authors talk about are a bit unorthodox, and do require some deep thinking and soul searching. If you take them seriously and try to apply them, you may be challenged to face some pretty uncomfortable truths about yourself.

But, this is how true, lasting change happens. And, we feel, it's worth the journey.

So, keep listening to find out why your team might not be as excited about your new product ideas as you want them to be, why what you don't say is just as important as what you do say, and why your everyday conversations might have more of an impact than you realize.

"The Three Laws of Performance" is divided into three main sections. The first section explains each of the laws in detail. The second section teaches leaders how to use the three laws in an organization. And the last section teaches us how to apply the three laws in our personal lives.

So, let's take a look at these laws, and what they have to do with you.

Before we explore the details, stop for a moment and think about what it's like to fix a major problem in your organization. Chances are, as soon as you fix one problem, another problem pops up to take its place. It's like plugging a leak in a pipe, and then getting frustrated when water starts pouring out further down the line.

The reason this is so common, the authors say, is that when we fix a problem, the results are only superficial. The real problem is all the stuff we can't see.

This includes things like our hopes, our fears, our dreams, or the nagging belief that we're never really going to change anything. All these underlying currents directly affect our future. We may not say these things out loud, but all these thoughts and feelings are where we're moving forward from. They're writing our future.

So, how does all this affect a company? Well, here's a good example. Imagine your company is selling products that people don't really want. No one is buying them, and sales are down. The employees are frustrated, and they believe that the company is going to get bought out or shut down. As the leader, you've come up with what you think is a great new product idea. But your team is less than enthusiastic.

This makes you want to tear your hair out. After all, this is the way out! Why can't everyone see that?

Well, the real problem is that employees don't believe anything will make a difference. They believe the company will always be two steps behind the competition, so anything new will just be a waste of time. They can't get involved with your new idea because deep down, they've already given up.

This is what the first law talks about: People's performance is directly influenced by how situations occur to them. As the CEO, you're seeing opportunity with this new product. But your team is seeing the new product as a last ditch effort. Change can't happen, because you're all responding to a different vision of the new product.

So, the first law says that our performance is directly related to how we each view a situation.

The second law has to do with language. To explain how this second law works, take a moment to picture a cluttered closet. It's piled high with clothes, shoes and other bits and pieces. And, you want to put the new suitcase you just bought in there. But, it won't fit. There's no room for your new item because the closet is so full of your old junk.

Well, the authors say, most companies are just like a cluttered closet. Upper management will come in with all these new ideas and catchphrases that are supposed to radically change the organization. They'll try to have conversations with the employees, but end up saying the same things, going over the same issues as they always do. And, nothing ever really changes.

Why does this happen? Because the leaders are trying to push the suitcase into that already-full closet. In short, they're trying to introduce something new before clearing out the clutter and making space for it.

The authors say that most of our beliefs are based on things that we don't say. That is, the inner voice conversations we have with ourselves, our unvoiced thoughts, and our quiet opinions. Before any major change can take place, either within us personally or in our organization, these hidden issues have to be cleared out and talked about. It's akin to dragging everything out of the closet.

If a company allows everyone on the team to give a voice to their fears and concerns, a conversation can be started to address what's really troubling people. Then the team can begin to work together to move forward.

There are some great examples throughout the book that illustrate these points. One of the most engaging is about the Polus Group, a company in Tokyo that was founded in 1969.

The founder, Mr Nakauchi, was very much loved and respected by everyone in the company. His three sons worked underneath him, and with Nakauchi at the helm, the company did extremely well.

All that changed in 1999, when the founder suffered a sudden, incapacitating stroke. Suddenly, the employees were left without their visionary leader. They had no idea what to do.

For the next few years, the sons tried to take the helm. But the company was stagnating. There was nothing but arguments, and everyone felt like the end was near. After all, without the founder, what could they possibly do?

It wasn't until one of the authors was brought in as a consultant that they realized what the problem was. After applying the three laws, he discovered the problem was everything that wasn't being said.

So, everyone on the team was given a voice to air out their unsaid fears and concerns. All of them wrote a letter to the founder just as if he could read it. And they were allowed to say whatever they wanted in the letter.

What happened after all this? Well, the company underwent a change. Employees began to realize that instead of hanging on to their old founder, they could better respect what he started by taking the company to the next level. They were able to let go of the past and start to envision a new, more exciting future.

The third and last law of performance builds on these first two. Basically, it says that until we can describe and identify the future we're headed towards, we can't change our course for something better.

Again, the Polus Group provides a good example. They were headed towards slumping sales and possible closure, because everyone believed they couldn't succeed without the founder. This was something everyone thought, but no one said.

It wasn't until this vision of the future was voiced out loud during a meeting that everyone woke up. They all agreed this was not a future they wanted. And, they were able to change course.

The concepts in the first half of "The Three Laws of Performance" are fairly thought provoking. Reading might be a bit slow at first, as you might have to read points a few times to fully grasp them. We certainly did.

But the authors do an excellent job illustrating every point with real world examples, so you can see what they're talking about, and how it applies. Without those stories, many of their points would be much harder to grasp.

And, there's so much more here than we can touch on. For instance, readers will learn about communication games called rackets. We've all played this type of game in the past, and it's enlightening to see how much it might be costing us. Fortunately, we also learn how to stop playing it.

The rest of the book dives into how we can use the three laws of performance to start transforming ourselves, and our organizations. And, the authors give us plenty to work with here.

For instance, as a leader you know that a good part of your day is spent in conversation. Conversation is the oil that greases the wheels of every company.

When you think about your conversations, though, what are they like? Noisy? Conflicting? Filled with gossip and chatter?

If most of your conversations are like this, it becomes almost impossible to make change happen. The reason is that when people keep talking the way they always have, their future is going to be what it's always been. Because conversation is so important to implementing change, it's up to the leader to start pushing the team in a different direction.

To do this, leaders need to stop the cycle of first thinking of ideas and then selling them to their teams. These are non-productive conversations. Instead, leaders need to pull people in with future-based language.

The authors define future-based language as words that don't define anything in the current reality. Future-based language is more of a declaration. It creates a future that the speaker is declaring will happen.

For an example, let's look at the Polus Group again. Remember their past future, when they were headed towards slumping sales and possible closure? Well, they all agreed that they didn't want that future. So, they spent months creating a new future, one that everyone in the company could stand behind. They committed themselves, as one, to move forward towards this new vision.

Importantly, this wasn't a future the leader decided on and then tried to sell to everyone else in the company. Every employee was involved, and the final vision kept evolving until everyone was happy with it.

That's the power of using future-based language, instead of regular descriptive language. The book itself goes into far more detail. It's a subtle concept, but it's one that has the power to be incredibly rewarding for a company stuck in the doldrums.

This is a timely issue, the authors say, because the heat is rising for organizations. It's getting harder and harder to stay competitive. People are paying much more attention to the role business plays in issues like climate change and social responsibility. Companies that don't make an effort to define their future and become self-led are going to fail in the end.

The last section of the book focuses on how to use the three laws in your personal life. And, you'll find many more personal development concepts here.

One of the most important lessons is that we learn how to identify what the authors call our life sentence. Our life sentence is a critical event in our past that's currently affecting who we are and how we act, here in the present.

You'll learn that most people have two sides. The first is the 'persona.' This is the side that sits at the foundation of your life sentence. For instance, if deep down you truly believe that you're not a good speaker, and that you have nothing worthwhile to say to anyone, then this is your persona.

The other side is your 'true' self. This is the person in your heart, who's not bound by the fear of your life sentence. In this last section, you learn how to overturn your life sentence, and start living your life from your true self.

A lot of readers will find this section helpful. It's full of enlightening information that can help all of us live a happier, more fulfilling life.

So, what's our final word on "The Three Laws of Performance"?

Well, this is definitely a book that you'll have to take your time with. Many of these concepts are different to what you'll find in other books on change and leadership. They're hard to fully grasp on the first read, so you might find it helpful to go through this book twice.

But, don't think this is a bad thing. The concepts in "The Three Laws of Performance" are unique, but once they're understood and applied, they could be incredibly valuable for readers. There's more than enough proof in the book's case histories to illustrate what's possible when these laws are applied. And because so many of these concepts are relevant in our personal life as well as our work life, the potential to create dramatic change is great.

If you're interested in finding ways to break down barriers and truly push yourself, and your team, towards a more rewarding future, you won't want to miss this book. "The Three Laws of Performance: Rewriting the Future of Your Organization and Your Life," by Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan,.is published by Jossey-Bass.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights.