I joined the Lubar Executive Education Podcast to share my framework for sustained high performance—the reality of leading complex, global teams at Google. The core of our conversation was simple: High performance is not driven by sporadic intensity or willpower, but through clarity, rhythm, and trust.
I developed the Standard of Consistency, which I call the 3S Pyramid (Standards, Structure, and Sharpening), to solve this challenge and operationalize excellence across teams in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.
The Core Principle: Systems Over Spark
The biggest mistake people make is mistaking intensity for performance. Motivation is a visitor, not a landlord, and is too unreliable for sustained success. What actually works is building an unbreakable system.
The best high performers practice acting their way into a feeling—they complete the required actions, and the feeling of accomplishment or success follows. They do not wait for motivation to show up.
The 3S Pyramid for Unbreakable Performance
The framework provides a clear path to building a consistent, sustainable system for your team:
- Standards (Who We Are): This is the non-negotiable floor for performance, representing the team's norms and values that drive behavior even when no one is watching. When established collaboratively, strong standards create psychological safety.
- Structure (How We Work): This is the low-drama operating system that eliminates chaos and scales leadership by defining the rhythm and pace for the team. Key elements include meeting cadences, playbooks, and clearly defined roles (like the RACI matrix).
- Sharpening (How We Grow): This critical top layer ensures the system remains agile and sharp, preventing staleness. Consistent Sharpening requires a culture of feedback and continuous learning, often utilizing structured models like the SBI (Situation, Behavior, Impact) method to ensure constructive criticism is situational, not personal.
Resilience, Wellness, and Avoiding Burnout
- Burnout is a System Problem: My personal experience with high-intensity roles taught me that burnout is often a system problem, not a personal failure. The solution is often changing the environment or structure, not necessarily changing the company or blaming your willpower.
- Focus on the Foundation: Personal wellness (like sleep and good nutrition) is a prerequisite, not a perk, for high performance.
- Final Advice: Everything begins with clarity in your own standards. As a leader, you must start by understanding your own strengths and weaknesses—it's the first step to building the kind-hearted edge and effective leadership that moves teams forward.
Life is lived,
Willy