Insights
NSC Group publishes research on organisational behaviour, workforce culture and performance measurement, alongside shorter editorials on the questions leaders are wrestling with. Everything here can be read in full and downloaded.
Whitepapers
Full research papers, each set out in full on the site with the original PDF alongside it.
Most Australian organisations govern behaviour with a document that tells people what not to do. This paper analyses 215 publicly available Australian codes of conduct, handbooks and conduct-adjacent policies — roughly 2.2 million words — and sets the findings against the evidence on psychological safety, role clarity and internal mobility.
Opinions on organisational performance are plentiful and cheap; sound understanding of how high performance is actually delivered is scarce. This paper extends the NSC High Performance Model to the harder question — not how performance is reached, but how it is sustained.
Consider a manager you thought was a poor leader. Avoided decisions, micromanaged, played favourites, went radio silent on feedback. These behaviours are infuriating, and they are also expensive — they destroy engagement, trust and productivity. This paper argues the cause is usually fear.
Few leaders would argue against the idea that trust is necessary for elite performance. Not nearly enough realise the height of its importance, and far too many dismiss trust-building as a soft or secondary competency. We tell the leaders we work with that building trust and belonging is their number one job.
The distant, aloof manager is a hangover from Ford and Taylor. NSC Group's surveying of more than 600 employees indicates that emotionally disconnected, aloof management remains a lived experience for far too many of them. This paper asks what leader communication actually does to organisational performance.
High performance is not any one thing and it is not easy to accomplish. It requires a series of habitual actions, implemented with discipline, that produce focused, high impact change. This paper sets out the NSC High Performance Operating Model and the research behind it.
Most managers consider themselves reasonably accomplished at business planning. Honestly, though — how many of us live the plan through to conclusion, and how many cascade it far enough that the people delivering the value even know it exists? Drafting a plan is less than half the work.
Articles
Shorter commentary from the NSC Group High Performance Ideas series.
A lack of planning is not why organisations fail to achieve their strategic intentions. Execution is. This editorial looks at the research on formal execution processes, employee uncertainty and leadership alignment, and why execution cannot be separated from a high performance climate.
Are your strategic plans piled on a shelf growing dust? Do managers only open them at reporting time? This editorial sets out the five critical failures of strategic performance systems and argues that simplicity, built-in reporting and open sharing of objectives are what make implementation stick.
In mid-2023 there was a whiff of uncertainty in the Australian business community. Many organisations responded by squeezing costs and hunkering down. This editorial argues that a cut-and-demoralise strategy damages the human capacity for high performance long after conditions improve.
Reliable methods and powerful analytical tools are widely available, yet the step between them — the definition and formulation of the questions — is routinely given scant attention. This editorial argues that questions are the engines of intellect, and that command-and-control structures quietly train them out of an organisation.
Most engagements begin with a short, confidential conversation about the question you are trying to answer. There is no cost or obligation attached to that discussion.
