Delivering High Performance: The Third Generation Organisation

Douglas Long is the author of Third Generation Leadership and the Locus of Control which focused on the new understanding of what influences individuals’ values, world views and the behaviours needed to facilitate leadership fit for the future. Here, in Delivering High Performance, he concentrates on individual, unit and organisational performance when an organisation is using a Third Generation Leadership approach. Leaders constantly seek high performance and high levels of staff engagement; but achieving either depends on the competence and commitment of individuals or groups. The relationships between these factors are complex. Many people are competent to do things - they have the ability - but are not prepared to do them. They lack the willingness, confidence or motivation and the readiness to perform. You can even have the most committed and capable people in the world, yet still miss performance targets if there are issues with other factors impacting on performance. This book is a response to enquiries from those excited by the prospect of a Third Generation Leadership approach but who still have to grapple with performance issues - people who want to obtain and maintain high performing organisations. In that sense it builds on the new knowledge imparted in Third Generation Leadership and the Locus of Control. It is a ’How to ...’ book that gives the reader practical tools that can be immediately applied and activities that can be undertaken in order to develop and maintain the required or even the desired level of performance.

Douglas Long’s PhD is in organisational psychology. He has taught at universities in Australia and the USA, including what is now part of Monash University and the RMIT Graduate College of Management in Australia, and Drexel University in the US. He researched, designed, and delivered the Leadership in Senior Management Programme at Macquarie Graduate School of Management in Sydney and has conducted executive leadership programmes at the Australian Graduate School of Management. He supervises doctoral candidates at Southern Cross University Graduate College of Management. As a consultant specialising in leadership and change with public and private sector clients throughout Australasia and South East Asia, Long has facilitated major change in large organisations. He has been a keynote speaker at conferences in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, The Netherlands, Finland, Spain, Brazil, and the USA and is the author of Third Generation Leadership and the Locus of Control (Gower, 2012).