Redefining high performance

In our pursuit of excellence, we have long believed that high performance is driven by ambition, technical mastery and an unrelenting focus on outcomes. As a former CEO, I have seen this model power multi-billion-dollar enterprises. But I have also seen where it quietly breaks down.

What we often call high performance is, in reality, ‘maximum extraction, maximum output’ at the cost of the person performing. It is a model that treats human beings as resources to be optimised rather than as the source of everything we are trying to build.

True high performance is not a sprint towards a financial goal. It is the ability to keep showing up fully, year after year, across five essential dimensions of life: physical vitality, emotional resilience, mental clarity, deep relationships and meaningful contribution. If even one is compromised, what we are building is not high performance. It is high risk.

The productivity paradox

Modern science is validating what wisdom traditions have long understood: our inner state drives our outer performance. Research by Shawn Achor, published in the Harvard Business Review, found that a positive emotional state produced 31 per cent higher productivity and 37 per cent higher sales performance, suggesting that inner state is not a by-product of performance but a precondition for it.

Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace Report shows that organisations with highly engaged workforces outperform peers by 23 per cent in profitability and experience 43 per cent lower attrition. Crucially, engagement is driven not just by compensation but by purpose, trust and a sense of meaning.

The World Happiness Report has consistently demonstrated that nations with higher social trust and well-being show greater economic resilience and innovation. And neuroscientist Barbara Fredrickson’s ‘Broaden and Build Theory’ shows that positive emotional states expand our cognitive range – we think more creatively and recover faster.

The implication is clear: happiness is not merely an outcome of success. It is a cause. But if happiness drives performance, what drives happiness?

From measurement to mastery

What we do not measure, we do not value – and what we do not value, we do not nurture. The idea of a Goodness Index emerges from this belief. But measurement is only the beginning. The real objective is enhancement.

For much of my corporate career, I measured what I was told to measure – revenue, market share, EBIDTA. These are not wrong metrics, but they are incomplete. They tell you how fast you are moving, not whether the direction is right or whether the people doing the moving will still be standing at the finish line.

The leaders I have admired most and the organisations that have endured share one quality that never appears on a dashboard. They operate from a foundation of goodness. Not as a policy but as a practice embedded in decisions made when no one was watching.

We have spent decades building faster engines – optimising for speed, scale, and output. We have achieved extraordinary results. But we have also produced burnout at scale, institutional distrust and a generation materially better off than any before it – yet increasingly adrift.

Something in the architecture is wrong. The invitation of the Goodness Index is not to slow down. It is to build on a ground that will hold. To recognise that the most sophisticated performance system available to a human being is not a tool or a framework – it is a well-governed inner life oriented toward contribution. If we want high performance that is sustainable and widely accessible, we must stop treating goodness as a side virtue and start recognising it as the foundation everything else is built upon – one that fuels vitality, strengthens resilience, sharpens clarity, deepens relationships and connects us to work that truly matters.

We have spent decades optimising performance. Now, it is time to redesign its foundations – not with more ambition but with more goodness!

The author is founder, Institute of Goodness