Joshua Adkisson

          Throughout my career, I have been exposed to many strategies, leadership philosophies, differing business tactics, as well as general people skills. These world-class companies have invested $millions of dollars on me over the course of two decades, not including the military. In an effort to distill and further refine all of the organizational Behavior and general psychology that I have been taught over the years, I have decided to start Lambda Performance Systems LLC. 

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Our goal is to "fundamentally change the way we do business!". 

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Interesting mantra! What does it mean? Well, in my travels, I have come across organization after organization, expecting to see some sort of system of procedural way of doing business. And organization after organization, I have been in awe over how little strategy or direction these sites have and are still able to be successful. Most notably, I was exposed to one of the biggest organizations in the world and was absolutely dumbfounded, reflecting on lack of systems, organization and training that occurred. Imagine such a successful organization...how much more they could achieve if everyone had the same goal, understanding of day-to-day operations, etc?!

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Lambda Performance Systems (LPS) has 3 main focuses in order to drive individual performance, as well as team and organizational success:

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Focus on the leader: There is a widely recognized gap in leadership skills for about 70-80% of those that hold a title of manager. We make the mistake in thinking leaders are magically imbued with leadership powers, unfortunately, having the title alone, a leader does not make. We focus on a few factors to correct this:

• Discovering identity and values: it is often a challenge to be a human being when you are always at odds with yourself. LPS identity and values exercise helps remove any confusion and establish, many times for the first time in leaders, who they are and what they value. This information drives all other subsequent decisions, both in their personal life, and as a professional.

• Understanding how people work: Just like discovering identity and values, the next step is in putting into perspective how other people work and why they act the way they do. Now that the leaders have experience with lack of knowledge about themselves, it is easier for leaders to have empathy for others that have not had the chance to learn about themselves. We touch on Behavior theory, examine the various factors that make people who they are and what can and cannot change (what is flexible with belief systems vs. what is set in stone). 

• How to approach and change behaviors and beliefs. Change is the only constant in the universe, it is also the most feared aspect for most. Knowing how people work gives the leader an advantage and can greatly assist them with making important cultural changes relatively quickly and with great support.

• Understanding the why and how of your team makes the "what you do" almost a trivial task. We have developed courses to reinforce good leadership practices, as well as implement versions of people systems that businesses all implement (or at least try to)

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Organizational Strategy: Our parallel focus, while working with leaders, is to create a more capable leadership team. An organization that has superior people skills will always outshine companies that are limited to just technical expertise...every time. This is because the majority of business is people-centered. We focus on the following strategies for success:

• Standardizing leadership mindset: We have all seen the cringy comparisons of leaders vs. managers. Buuuut, these comparisons still exist because the workforce as a whole, recognizes the gap, but does not know how to correct manager behavior. We address this in our first fundamental skill-block by addressing mindsets and leadership strategies/solutions.

• decentralizing training - Futureproofing your business: almost every single organization is in trouble. I recently talked to the major sugar manufacturer in the world and they are struggling with expertise retention. They have a huge exodus of knowledge and never made plans to address this, assuming that they probably kicked the can down the road because it wasn't an issue at the time. We address this issue at a fundamental level. This is addressed as a core tenant of leadership: everyone is capable and able, training and documentation are everyone's job. We share strategies on how to tackle this issue in a very simple and easy way.

• developing capability at ALL levels: the old way of doing business, the Union way of doing business...these ways cannot and do not sustain business. For decades now, the game has always been "do more with less". The only way to do this is for everyone to be capable of "wearing more than one hat". Ever since my first exposure to US manufacturing, this has been as important as the 1st amendment. Success is too important to tolerate "that's not my job" mentality. There are several ways to acknowledge this and make the team happy at the same time.

• making business people-centered, removing technical expertise as a barrier: technical skills can be trained. People skills can also be trained, but most organizations shirk the "soft skills" because of the perception that they are not valuable while technical skills have an obvious tangible quantification. We argue that various people skills can be quantified, and they are far more valuable and impactful than the technical skills could ever be. Things like Leadership development, and team dynamics, while not simple, the impacts can easily be measured...simple, but not easy.

• Adopting and making existing business strategies more efficient...don't recreate the wheel. We know what does and doesn't work by now. Autocratic organizations are restrictive and kill innovation. anarchal matrix organizations are equally ineffective as there is no clear structure or leader and focus. Many organizations have dedicated untold billions into researching and trialing various methods and strategies. Starting with quality circles and evolving into Toyota Production System, the current model, Total Productive Management, is a fantastic way to address all of the opportunities above that organizations fight daily. There are also newer and more targeted strategies, such as High-Performance Work Systems, that address a lot of policies and people strategies. Then there are great and effective problem solving strategies, such as LEAN, Six Sigma, SCRUM, 8D, etc, etc. The TLDR is that there are fantastic strategies that already exist, most organizations struggle to make a decision and, more importantly, struggle to dedicate the needed time to implement and get proficient.