1. © 2016, Thomas Juli
Originally published as part of the 2016 PMI® Global Congress Proceedings –
Barcelona, Spain
Excite! Unfolding
Organizational
Potential and Performance
THOMAS JULI,
PH.D.
Magna International,
Motivate2B
ABSTRACT
In times of increasing competition in the
marketplace, organizational excellence and
performance is ever more important. But what
does ‘organizational excellence and performance’
actually mean? And how can it be achieved? –
This session shares how an organizational
development program at Magna International
approached these questions and what answers it
yielded.
Keywords: organizational development;
organizational performance; people
development; creative economy
THE EXCITE! PROGRAM AT MAGNA
INTERNATIONAL
Magna International is the leading global
automotive supplier with worldwide more than
139,000 employees in 400 facilities, located in
29 countries on 4 continents. Deep in the culture
of Magna is the notion that each plant should be
run in an entrepreneurial manner. Plant managers
have considerable freedom to run their plants as
they see fit, as long as they are aligned with the
current strategic initiatives of world-class
manufacturing, innovation, and commitment to
the development of people.
In an effort to improve its business performance
Magna launched Excite!, an organizational
evaluation and development program, in the fall
of 2014. The goal was to find out what it takes
to unfold organizational potential and
performance. For this purpose, new approaches,
methods and tools were developed and tested in
several pilot projects across Europe. The result
was a model and toolkit for evaluating
organizational performance and concrete
measures how to unfold organizational potential
and performance.
This paper and session distills the general
applicable lessons learned from the Excite!

2. © 2016, Thomas Juli
Originally published as part of the 2016 PMI® Global Congress Proceedings –
Barcelona, Spain
program. It will also explain why and how
leadership is the decisive factor for unfolding
organizational potential and performance.
THE HEART OF ORGANIZATIONAL
EXCELLENCE
In times of increasing competition in the
marketplace, organizational excellence or
performance is ever more important. The
Excite! program identified three drivers for
organizational excellence and performance. (1)
delighting your clients, (2) building a happy
workplace, and (3) sustaining business value.
Let’s have a look at each one of these drivers.
THE THREE DRIVERS OF
ORGANIZATIONAL EXCELLENCE
(1) CLIENT DELIGHT
When running a business you have a choice. You
can do the bare minimum to satisfy your
customers or you decide to go the extra mile and
delight your customers. In either case the
prerequisite is that you know who your
customers are. As self-explanatory as this is,
there are a lot of companies that seem to have
forgotten whom they really serve.
Another question every business should be able
to answer is whether or not it wants to build
customers for life or only for the short-term.
What is more important, quick, short-term profits
vs. a long and outstanding customer relationship
with long-term, sustainable profits which may
yield less quick wins but greater pay offs in the
long run?
And what about the customer’s perspective?
Which company do customers want to do
business with. One which treats customers like a
number, a resource or a sole revenue source. Or a
company that reaches out to its customers, seeks
to understand and satisfy their needs,
communicates with them, walks in their shoes
and shows a sincere interest in them? – Client
delight is about the second company.
(2) A HAPPY WORKPLACE
Most companies speak of their employees as
assets. This sounds good and wonderful. But
then, ‘assets’ for what? Are the employees just
resources that add up to a bigger picture, the
company’s outcome, products and services?
Unfortunately, most average companies fall into
this category. This is not to say that treating
people as human resources or human machines is
advisory. Especially not if you are interested in
organizational excellence and performance. Yes,
you can train and treat them like machines, push
them to their limits, get the most out of them –
for some time, until they are either burnt out or
leave your company. You replace them and start
the process anew. You may be interested and
actually achieve employee satisfaction.
However, this is not to be mistaken with
inspired, motivated and performing employees
who enjoy their work because they can identify
themselves with the purpose of the company,
love working with their colleagues and serving
their customers, are passionate about their work
and enjoy a safe, secure workplace.
Companies can build such a workplace. Just as
knowing the needs of their clients they have to
show a sincere interest in the needs of their
employees. It starts with a safe, secure and
environmentally friendly work environment. For
employees to follow a direction you have to set
it, share it and let your employees contribute to
it. Let them become a part of it.
A happy workplace does not mean that you have
to do everything just to please your employees
without expecting anything in return. But you
have to build an environment where they can
prosper and perform at their best. A first start is

3. © 2016, Thomas Juli
Originally published as part of the 2016 PMI® Global Congress Proceedings –
Barcelona, Spain
that you don’t treat employees as resources but
as people, as human beings.
(3) BUSINESS VALUE
The former CEO of General Electrics, Jack
Welch, describes the call for maximizing
shareholder value as the dumbest idea in the
world. Others describe it as corporate cocaine
(Denning et al 2015). In either way, the bottom
line is that shareholder value is not identical to
business value.
Think about the following: you want to invest
into a company, or even better, you want to
acquire a company. What do you look at? Just
the present stock price and its outlook? Of course
not. You take a number of factors into account:
the overall business performance and outlook,
customer satisfaction ratings, market position,
innovation performance, the skillset and turnover
rate of the workforce, the attractiveness of the
company as an employer of choice and many
other factors. But how come most companies
these days just talk about satisfying shareholder
interests and maximizing shareholder value?!
Shareholder value is the result of a well-run
business and not the other way around. Hence,
treating shareholder value as the purpose and
driver of your business is not smart but myopic
and can even be detrimental to the value of your
business. From a business perspective, it is plain
stupid.
THE SWEET SPOT OF
ORGANIZATIONAL EXCELLENCE
The sweet spot of organizational excellence is
where all three drivers outlined above come
together. If you depict the three drivers as three
circles, it is the area where all three drivers
overlap that you can spark organizational
performance and excellence.
Exhibit 1: Venn Diagram of Organizational Performance.
This is not a one-time effort. You have to
continuously improve your own performance to
stay in this sweet spot. In this sense, continuous
self-improvement can be considered a fourth
driver of and for organizational excellence. It
adds a dynamic dimension to organizational
excellence. Rather than a static Venn diagram
with three circles we can depict this as a Möbius
circle.
Exhibit 2: The Excite! Cycle of Organizational Performance.
The bigger the overlapping areas of all three
drivers, the better organizational performance is.
This implies that in order to develop
organizational performance you have to take all
four drivers into account.

4. © 2016, Thomas Juli
Originally published as part of the 2016 PMI® Global Congress Proceedings –
Barcelona, Spain
This holistic view requires leadership, a specific
mindset, philosophy and practice. It is not solely
driven by short-term gains but balances long-,
mid- and short-term needs and goals. It is has a
clear customer and people focus and nurtures an
open innovative culture. This leadership mindset
is at the heart of the principles for organizational
performance.
PRINCIPLES FOR ORGANIZATIONAL
PERFORMANCE
There are 5 principles that provide guidance for
this philosophy and practice to emerge.
1. Leadership mindset
2. Organizational structure
3. Commitment & discipline
4. Continuous self-improvement
5. Operational stability & quality delivery
(1) LEADERSHIP MINDSET
Organizational performance and excellence
requires a holistic, disciplined and committed
servant leadership style. Holistic leadership in
this sense means that all four drivers of
organizational excellence are understood,
supported and practiced day in, day out.
Disciplined and committed leadership means
that it is understood that organizational
excellence and performance takes time to
develop. Corollary, leadership understands the
importance of long-term thinking. It knows the
motivation of the organization and where it
comes from, it has a deep understanding and
appreciation of its customers and their needs.
The interacting balance of Motivation, Vision
and Practices of an organization can be termed
the MVP of an organization. It is crucial for
organizational performance and excellence to
develop that leadership knows, supports and
communicates the MVP of the organization. The
MVP of the organization helps put short-term
goals into perspective. No doubt, quarterly
results are important. But they have to be seen
into perspective. Not short-term profits (EBIT)
are the drivers of business but the health of the
organization which encompass its clients, people
and the business as a whole.
(2) ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE
Build and nurture autonomous teams with clear,
commonly understood and supported vision and
goals, roles and accountabilities. Communication
in and between teams has to be open, transparent
and conversational rather than top-down and
hierarchical.
(3) COMMITMENT & DISCIPLINE
Leadership is not limited to one or two people
“at the top” of an organization. Leadership can
be practiced by everyone regardless of his or her
role. On this token the principles for
organizational performance ought to be
understood, supported and committed by the
complete staff. This requires discipline on all
organizational levels..
Performance merits recognition. Some
organizations have a bonus system in place. This
can work and promote organizational
performance as long as it is transparent, fair and
objective. Rewarding teamwork fosters team
spirit and accountability.
Standardized work can be a great help and serve
make work more efficient and productive
yielding better quality and hence value.
However, standardized work, too, is just a tool
and hence should remain a servant and not
become a master.
(4) CONTINUOUS SELF-IMPROVEMENT

5. © 2016, Thomas Juli
Originally published as part of the 2016 PMI® Global Congress Proceedings –
Barcelona, Spain
Management has to build an open, transparent,
collaborative and engaging environment for
continuous self-improvement. It ought to
recognize and encourage small and not just big
improvements because sometimes little changes
can make a big difference. If you are faced with
redundant, inefficient processes, procedures,
tools or practices – eliminate them if they are
waste and do not add value.
(5) OPERATIONAL STABILITY &
QUALITY DELIVERY
At the end of the day the organization has to
deliver. Not once but in a consistent and stable
manner with high quality and reliability.
There is a need for long-, mid- and short-term
organizational as well operational priorities. And
they have to be transparent, i.e., known and
supported by the whole workforce. A plan by
itself is be of little value if not executed. As part
of a bigger, long-term plan and vision it can give
people the necessary direction and orientation. If
reviewed regularly to check whether or not it still
serves its purpose for leading an organization
toward its vision, this plan is a cornerstone of
operational stability and quality delivery.
APPRECIATE YOUR PERFORMANCE
TO UNFOLD YOUR POTENTIAL
Just because a company has been successfully
been in business doesn’t mean that it cannot
improve its organizational performance and
excel to the next level. The question is how to
get there. The Excite! program followed an
appreciative inquiry approach, inviting the
various plants to talk about their existing
performance. Where do they perform, how and
why? What makes them so special?
By focusing on the positive, on past
accomplishments and present performance you
create an environment that invites people to think
of additional ways and means to improve their
performance, taking it to the next level. This is
not difficult at all. All you need to do is find
people who can talk about their experience and
are willing to share stories.
Once you have done this people can easily point
out areas they want (or need) to improve and
then plan concrete activities along those lines.
THE FUTILITY OF TRADITIONAL
ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Just because a company has been successfully
been in business it doesn’t mean that it cannot
improve its organizational performance and
excel to the next level. However, it is often not
about developing a new organization but about
unfolding the organizational potential and
performance as the Excite! program has shown.
Once areas of improvements are identified, the
affected workforce jointly develops concrete
measures, in form of prototypes or projects, to
move forward and learn from them. The Excite!
program revealed that organizational excellence
can only be achieved through motivated and
committed employees whose goal is to delight
customers with innovative products and
processes. Excite! placed the customer and
workforce into the center of the analysis and
project work, without neglecting the resulting
business value and thus sustainable economical
success of the company. As such, the Excite!
approach is applicable to other industries and
organizations.

6. © 2016, Thomas Juli
Originally published as part of the 2016 PMI® Global Congress Proceedings –
Barcelona, Spain
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Dr. Thomas Juli is an expert for agile and
systemic organizational transformation,
leadership development and people
innovation. Until recently he led a strategic
organizational development program at the
global automotive supplier Magna
International. Next to independent consulting
(www.motivate2b.com) he mentors start-ups
and is a lecturer for innovation and
technology management at a private research
university. He is the author of “Leadership
Principles for Project Success” (CRC Press,
New York, 2011).
CONNECT WITH ME!
Dr-Thomas-Juli @ThomasJuli Mindjet
Thomas.Juli ThomasJuli-
Motivate2B
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Denning, S., Goldstein, J., & Pacanowsky, M. (2015). The Learning Consortium for the Creative
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Juli, T. (2011). Leadership Principles for Project Success. New York: CRC Press.
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http://motivate2b.com/principles-for-org-performance/
Juli, T. (2015b). The Heart of Organizational Excellence. Retrieved December 29, 2015, from
http://motivate2b.com/heart-organizational-excellence/

7. © 2016, Thomas Juli
Originally published as part of the 2016 PMI® Global Congress Proceedings –
Barcelona, Spain
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