The purposing of high-performing systems

Vaill maintains that clarifying an organization's purposes is a prominent feature of all high-performing systems (HPSs). He defines HPSs as human systems that are doing dramatically better than other systems as measured by one or more criteria. Ten years' research on such systems is summarized in eight broad categories: (1) clarity of purposes, (2) member motivation, (3) teamwork, (4) leadership, (5) technology and innovation, (6) boundedness from the environment, (7) relationship to the environment, and (8) the unique ways in which the system "jells." HPSs are treated as unusually fertile settings for understanding how leaders of human systems engage in what is called "purposing"--a continuous stream of actions that has the effect of inducing clarity, consensus, and commitment regarding the organization's basic purposes. The article explores the personal qualities that enable HPS leaders to define and maintain a clear sense of purpose among all systems members. Three major characteristics are ascribed to such leaders: (1) the willingness to invest large amounts of time in the system, both in the sense of hour-to-hour and day-to-day time and in the sense of year-to-year and even decade-to-decade time; (2) the ability to develop and express deep feeling about the system, its purposes, the people in it, its history, and its future; and (3) the ability to focus on the issues and variables in the system that really make a difference in its performance. This is the Time-Feeling-Focus theory of HPS leadership.