What Truly Makes Organizations High-Performing

Companies with high organizational performance are more innovative, productive, and successful. This performance is driven primarily by adaptability, clarity of goals, and exploration in how organizations are structured, while efficiency plays a supporting role. What theory has long suggested can now be statistically confirmed through our cross-country study.

Yet, according to respondents, a great deal of potential remains untapped: while U.S. companies leverage around 70% of their performance potential, Germany reaches only about 60%. Behind this also lies a management issue. While German companies tend to operate with a focus on security, planning, and documentation, U.S. companies are more strongly driven by a mindset of shaping, steering, and embracing change.

Three out of four respondents report having experienced reorganizations within the past five years. Every second person believes further transformation is necessary to achieve future goals. Yet Germany struggles in this area: only around 17% of respondents say the reorganization was successful, and 48% describe it as slow and exhausting. In the U.S., both aspects are viewed far more positively.

Four out of ten respondents say that employee potential is not being fully realized. In Germany, only around one in three people also report having clarity about who is responsible for what. One reason lies in the use of data: every third respondent considers working with data to be too time-consuming, while its value for quantitative and qualitative workforce planning is underestimated. Respondents in the U.S. value and use visualizations far more intensively than respondents in Germany.