A Practical Guide to Business Excellence: Performance Magazine’s Business Excellence Edition

Business excellence, while it is what differentiates good from great, is easier to discuss than diagnose, especially in an era of disruptions. Many organizations know they want to improve, but fewer have a structured way to understand where they stand, what is working, and which capabilities need to be strengthened next.  To give just one example: from the perspective of firefighting, linear planning looks mature, even excellent. From the perspective of rethinking the nature of the business itself to include ecosystem principles, innovative technologies, or real time personalization, linear planning looks barely good enough. 

The power of maturity assessments therefore comes from their ability to contour where the organization stands, without imposing measures that are counterintuitive or counterproductive to the organizational reality. This is the mission of GPA Unit; we aim to empower organizations to harness their own strengths and transform their own potential into improvements. We don’t tell them what to do, we help them see what they could become. 

The Business Excellence Edition of Performance Magazine addresses this challenge through a clear focus on maturity assessments. Developed through a collaboration between The KPI Institute and the Global Performance Audit Unit, this edition brings together frameworks, expert views, case examples, and practical guidance for organizations that want to improve their strategy and performance management systems.

Why talk about the 2024 Business Excellence Edition now? 

Originally published as the 2024 Business Excellence Edition of Performance Magazine, this issue remains especially relevant today as organizations enter the mid-year review period—a moment when leaders assess first-half performance, recalibrate priorities, and decide what needs to change before the year closes. 

It is also a strong foundational edition for readers who want to better understand how maturity assessments work. Rather than presenting business excellence as an abstract ambition, the magazine explains how it can be assessed through concrete organizational capabilities.

In simple terms, the edition gives readers:

• a conceptual introduction to maturity models;
• a view of the five key capabilities assessed by the GPA Unit;
• guidance on how to conduct a maturity assessment;
• examples from organizations that have gone through assessment processes;
• insights into the role and skills of the performance management system assessor.

A capability-based view of business excellence

One of the strongest aspects of the edition is that it covers each major capability in the GPA Unit’s integrated performance management maturity model. This makes the magazine useful not only for general readers, but also for strategy professionals, performance managers, consultants, auditors, and organizational development specialists.

Here’s how the edition addresses each of the capabilities: 

• Strategic planning is explored through Cristina Mihăiloaie’s cover story on closing the strategy-execution gap, as well as the article developed by Cristina Mihăiloaie, Daniela Vuta, and Kirolos Wassef on strengthening planning practices.
• Performance measurement is covered through the article on the Performance Measurement Maturity Model, with a focus on KPI selection, documentation, target setting, data collection, visualization, and governance.
• Performance improvement is brought forward through Doina Popovici’s article on maturity assessments and the GPA Unit’s framework, showing how organizations can turn assessment results into improvement priorities.
• Employee performance management is discussed in the article by Silvana Badita and Doina Popovici on continuous engagement, with emphasis on linking individual performance to broader organizational goals.
• Performance culture is addressed through Andra-Teodora Gorski’s article on building a performance-driven culture, connecting leadership, communication, accountability, learning, and well-being.

The edition also includes practical guidance for organizations and professionals interested in the assessment field:

• The interview with Doina Popovici is one of the key highlights, offering a practitioner’s view on how organizations can prepare for a maturity assessment, what benefits they can expect, and how findings can be translated into concrete improvement actions.
• The article on how to conduct a strategy and performance management maturity assessment explains the process behind the assessment, including the evidence-based, perception-based, and interview-based perspectives.

A useful edition for future assessors

The edition is also relevant for professionals who want to work in the field of maturity assessment. The Career Insights section introduces the role of the Performance Management System Assessor and the skills required to perform this work effectively.

This adds an important professional development angle. Readers can understand not only what maturity assessments are, but also who conducts them, what competencies are required, and why the assessor role is becoming more relevant as organizations seek more structured ways to improve performance.

A practical starting point

Overall, the Business Excellence Edition is a useful starting point for organizations and professionals interested in maturity assessments. It explains the foundations, breaks down the main capabilities, shows how assessments are conducted, and connects the methodology to real organizational questions.

Its central message is simple: business excellence does not come from isolated improvements. It requires an integrated system that connects strategy, measurement, improvement, people, and culture.

For organizations beginning this journey, the edition provides a clear first step: understand the system before trying to improve it.

Explore the full Business Excellence Edition to learn how maturity assessments can support strategy, measurement, improvement, people, and culture.

Explore the edition: performance-magazine-special-issue-gpa-unit.pdf 

Buy the paperback: Performance Magazine Issue No. 31, 2024 - Business Excellence Edition: The KPI Institute: 9798335771191: Amazon.com: Books