BECOME® INSTITUTE
ULTRAPERFORMANCE
Ultraperformance is the generation of 750 to 1,500 times more enterprise value per product or service than conventional competitors operating within a range of 1 to 3.
It is not a metaphor for exceptional performance. It is the name BECOME® gives to an extraordinary difference in value creation identified through more than twenty-five years of interdisciplinary research into leaders and their organizations.
The magnitude of that difference is remarkable. But the most important finding of the research is not how much more value ultraperformers create.
It is why they create it.
Ultraperformers do not achieve these results by doing what conventional companies do, only better. They think, work and organize from a fundamentally different starting point. Rather than allowing markets, competitors, revenue targets, growth ambitions or other external objectives to determine what they should become, they build their business from the inside out — from their intrinsic identity and the unique value they exist to bring to the world.
BECOME® has modeled this fundamentally different way of doing business in the BECOME® Framework: an integrated business logic and architecture in which Identity, Strategy, Tactics and Operations form one coherent whole.
That is the architecture behind ultraperformance.
WHAT IS ULTRAPERFORMANCE?
Ultraperformance describes a level of organizational value creation so far beyond conventional competitive performance that comparing the two merely as “better” and “worse” obscures the actual difference.
The measure emerged from financial analysis of the organizations studied by BECOME®. Financial specialists compared the enterprise value generated per physical product or service by identified ultraperformers with the enterprise value per product or service generated by their conventional competitors.
The conventional companies operated within a comparative range of approximately 1 to 3.
The ultraperformers generated 750 to 1,500 times more enterprise value per product or service.
In practical terms, these companies were able to create vastly more enterprise value with dramatically fewer products and services.
BECOME® calls this ultraperformance.
The underlying calculations, methodology, comparative groups and limitations of this finding are documented separately in the BECOME® research section.
ULTRAPERFORMANCE IS NOT HIGH PERFORMANCE
High performance is an established field of organizational research and management practice. Definitions differ, but high-performance organizations are generally understood as organizations that achieve results superior to those of comparable organizations over a sustained period.
Ultraperformance describes something else.
The distinction is not simply that an ultraperformer scores higher on the same performance scale. The research behind BECOME® indicates that ultraperformers operate according to a fundamentally different business logic.
A conventional company can become exceptionally good at understanding its market, responding to customers, outperforming competitors, setting ambitious targets, improving processes and executing its strategy. It can become a high-performing organization while remaining fundamentally outside-in: the external world continues to determine what the organization believes it needs to become.
Ultraperformers reverse that logic.
They begin with who they intrinsically are and the unique value they can bring to the world. From that identity they determine what they intend to become, how they will create that future, how the organization must operate to make it real, and how people think, decide, collaborate and act every day.
The difference is therefore not simply more performance.
It is a different source of performance.
HIGH PERFORMANCE VERSUS ULTRAPERFORMANCE
| Dimension | HIGH PERFORMANCE | ULTRAPERFORMANCE |
|---|---|---|
| Starting point | Primarily external performance requirements and competitive context | The intrinsic identity of the enterprise |
| Primary orientation | Performing exceptionally well relative to peers and objectives | Creating the unique value that follows from who the enterprise intrinsically is |
| Logic | Predominantly outside-in | Inside-out |
| Strategy | Commonly shaped by market, competition, opportunities and performance objectives | Developed directly from the intrinsic identity of the enterprise |
| Architecture | Existing organizational logic is improved and aligned | Identity, Strategy, Tactics and Operations are developed as one integrated business logic and architecture |
| Financial performance | An explicit organizational objective and performance measure | A consequence of exceptional value creation |
| BECOME® research range | Conventional competitors: approximately 1–3 | Ultraperformers: 750–1,500× enterprise value per product or service |
This does not make high performance wrong. Nor does it mean that every organization described as high-performing operates identically.
It means that ultraperformance is not another name for high performance.
It describes a different phenomenon.
THE LIMITS OF OPTIMIZING THE EXISTING SYSTEM
Most approaches to improving organizational performance begin with the organization as it currently exists.
A new strategy is developed. Processes are improved. Structures are redesigned. Leadership is strengthened. Culture is addressed. New targets are introduced. An operating model is changed. Employees are asked to take greater ownership.
Each intervention may be valuable.
But they usually share an assumption: the underlying business logic of the organization remains fundamentally valid.
BECOME® research into ultraperformers led to a different conclusion. If the underlying logic is outside-in, optimizing individual elements does not transform that logic into an inside-out one.
A purpose statement cannot accomplish this by itself. Neither can a new strategy, organizational structure, leadership program, culture program or operating model.
The system itself has to become coherent from its origin.
Where this means transforming the underlying business logic and organizational architecture rather than merely improving symptoms, processes or separate parts, the enterprise moves from optimization into business transformation.
That origin is Identity.
WHY CONVENTIONAL COMPANIES KEEP FACING THE SAME PROBLEMS
Strategy execution. Alignment. Engagement. Culture. Innovation. Change. Transformation.
Organizations spend enormous amounts of time and money trying to solve these problems separately.
Our research suggests that many of them originate from the same underlying business logic.
Discover why all the problems in your company may be one and the same →
THE BECOME® FRAMEWORK
The BECOME® Framework models the organizational logic found in ultraperformers as four inseparably connected architectural layers:
Identity → Strategy → Tactics → Operations
They are not four conventional management subjects placed next to each other.
Each layer follows logically from the one before it.
IDENTITY
The starting point is the intrinsic identity of the enterprise: its Intrinsic DNA and Purpose.
This is not a mission statement, a collection of corporate values or a communications exercise. It establishes what the enterprise intrinsically is and the unique value it can bring to the world.
Identity becomes the timeless compass for everything that follows.
STRATEGY
Within BECOME®, Strategy is not primarily a response to market forecasts, competitive moves or externally imposed growth targets.
Strategy establishes the business model the enterprise intends to have created within approximately three to five years as the logical expression of its Identity.
The question changes from What should we do given what is happening around us? to What must we create because of who we are?
TACTICS
Strategy alone does not create reality.
The third architectural layer determines the unique Tactics required to realize the chosen Strategy: the targets, approaches, indicators and initiatives through which the future business model is brought into existence.
Tactics therefore does not sit separately from Strategy. It follows from it.
OPERATIONS
The final layer brings the new logic into the everyday reality of the enterprise.
Responsibilities, authority, accountability, decision-making, collaboration, behavior and operational routines must all support what the organization has decided to become.
Otherwise the new Identity, Strategy and Tactics are forced back into the old way of working.
Ultraperformance therefore cannot be created by changing only what an organization wants to achieve.
The organization must change how it thinks and works.
THE PARADOX OF ULTRAPERFORMANCE
One of the most striking characteristics of the ultraperformers studied by BECOME® is that their extraordinary financial performance is not necessarily the result of making financial performance their primary purpose.
Their attention is directed elsewhere.
They are driven by what they believe should exist in the world and by the unique contribution they are capable of making.
Apple provides a particularly visible illustration. The extraordinary enterprise value created by the company was achieved with a remarkably concentrated physical product portfolio. The logic was not simply to produce more products in order to generate more revenue. The organization became known for an intense focus on creating products it believed should exist.
The financial consequence was extraordinary value creation.
This distinction is fundamental to BECOME®:
Ultraperformers do not create exceptional value because exceptional enterprise value is their reason for being. Exceptional enterprise value emerges because they create exceptional value for the world.
That reverses the conventional performance equation.
CAN ULTRAPERFORMANCE BE MEASURED?
Yes — but the distinction between the outcome and the organizational conditions producing that outcome is essential.
Ultraperformance itself is defined through performance outcomes: the extraordinary enterprise value generated per product or service relative to conventional competitors.
The organizational logic behind that outcome can be examined separately.
At the architectural level, an organization can assess whether Identity, Strategy, Tactics and Operations actually form one coherent system or whether they are independent management layers held together by targets, processes and coordination.
At the organizational level, the consequences can be observed in how responsibility is taken, how decisions are made, how authority is distributed, how people collaborate, how strategy is translated into action and whether everyday behavior reinforces or contradicts the architecture.
At the performance level, the economic and other consequences of that system become visible.
BECOME® therefore does not define ultraperformance by a culture score, an engagement score or a leadership assessment.
The ultimate test is value creation.
The detailed research methodology and financial comparisons underlying the BECOME® ultraperformance findings are presented in the BECOME® Research section.
WHERE DID THE CONCEPT OF ULTRAPERFORMANCE COME FROM?
Ultraperformance emerged from more than twenty-five years of interdisciplinary research by scientist, author and serial entrepreneur Eric Bartels into the behavior of leaders and the organizations they build.
The research included extensive interviews with hundreds of leaders and in-depth study of organizations from within, combined with insights from international research in psychology, organizational science, strategy, philosophy and human motivation.
The original question was not how companies could become more efficient or more profitable.
It was why a very small group of organizations appeared capable of creating extraordinary and enduring value while others, often with access to comparable people, capital, technology and markets, remained within a dramatically narrower performance range.
The research led first to the BECOME® Ontology, which explains the broader underlying logic, and subsequently to the BECOME® Framework, which models the business logic and architecture observed in ultraperformers.
The BECOME® Program was developed to enable enterprises to build and implement that logic themselves.
HOW AN ORGANIZATION BECOMES AN ULTRAPERFORMER
Understanding the architecture is not enough.
An enterprise cannot become an ultraperformer simply by adopting BECOME® terminology, defining a new purpose or inserting its Intrinsic DNA into its existing strategy and organization.
The complete business logic and architecture must be developed and implemented.
The BECOME® Program does this through four consecutive phases.
First, the enterprise establishes its Intrinsic DNA and Identity.
Second, it defines the business model it intends to have created three to five years from now. Within BECOME®, this is Strategy.
Third, it develops the unique Tactics required to realize that Strategy.
Finally, the organization implements a fundamentally new way of thinking and working so that its daily Operations, responsibilities, authority, accountability, decisions and behavior become consistent with the architecture it has created.
Crucially, this is not an architecture designed by external consultants and handed to the organization.
A representative Leadership Coalition, consisting of formal and informal leaders from across the enterprise, develops and realizes it themselves. The BECOME® Practitioner facilitates, structures, challenges, connects and deepens that process without taking ownership away from the enterprise.
The result is not dependence on BECOME®.
It is an enterprise that has developed the capability to continually actualize its own potential.
WHO IS ULTRAPERFORMANCE FOR?
Ultraperformance is relevant to organizations that are not satisfied with optimizing what already exists.
It is particularly relevant when an enterprise has reached a point at which incremental improvement no longer addresses the real question: when growth has made the existing organization increasingly complex; when strategy, structure, behavior and execution have become disconnected; when a new generation of leadership is taking responsibility; when a company has lost clarity about what makes it uniquely valuable; or when its leaders know that the next phase cannot simply be an improved version of the previous one.
BECOME® does not begin by asking how such an organization can perform better.
It begins with a more fundamental question:
Who is this enterprise — and what becomes possible when everything it does follows from that?
FROM PERFORMANCE TO ULTRAPERFORMANCE
The conventional performance question is:
How can we become better at what we do?
The ultraperformance question is different:
What could we become if everything we do were built from who we intrinsically are?
That is the transition modeled in the BECOME® Framework and implemented through the BECOME® Program.
Explore how organizations implement the BECOME® business logic and architecture through BECOME® Practice.