We use this pyramid image to help people understand the true basis of organizational success. Success builds from the bottom up. On top of the pyramid are the key outcomes organizations need to be successful, or even to survive. Examples of such outcomes might include certain levels of profitability, market share, efficiency and so on.

To get those outcomes, the organization must produce certain products, get certain results, or accomplish certain objectives. These accomplishments are sometimes the work of individuals and sometimes groups, but they funnel upward into the desired outcomes.

Many organizations stop their analysis of success at this point without emphasizing, or perhaps even realizing, that accomplishment is the by-product of human behavior--that is, what people say and do.

Without behavior there would be no accomplishments and, in turn, no organizational outcomes. Behavior is the raw material from which organizational success is fashioned. Accordingly, behavior should be as precious to an organization as any of it's other raw materials, maybe more. Organizations must realize that to improve, or even to maintain their current levels of success, they must focus on the base of the Pyramid of Organizational Success. They must get their employees saying and doing enough of the right things.

Identifying the right things to say and do is not necessarily an easy matter. However, it is something that must be embraced as an organizational responsibility, not just left up to the discretion of employees, as happens all too often. The reason this is an organizational responsibility gets back to the real purpose for which employees are hired in the first place.

This Pyramid of Organizational Success conception leads to a new view of workers. In essence, by this view, organizations are renting behavior from employees. So, hiring is more a matter of forming a behavioral contract than it is of enlisting a person with desired traits and characteristics. It is therefore imperative that organizations have some idea of what behavior they want to rent from their people. After all, if behavior is what ultimately makes them successful, then they should be keenly interested in renting "the right stuff," so to speak. If they don't know what the right stuff is, how will they ever know if they actually get it?