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vii Foreword I first experienced the benefits of adopting the high performance organi­ zation (HPO) framework during my time in ATLAS, first as its chief oper- ating officer (COO) and subsequently as the chief executive officer (CEO) of the consortium. The ATLAS HPO journey is well documented in André’s book What Makes a High Performance Organization, and it is also referred to in this book. In summary, ATLAS was a consortium of technology companies serving defense and security customers. The con- sortium had struggled to form a team ethos across parent company boundaries, and the resultant siloed organization was suffering from change fatigue. This change was desperately needed but was rarely seen through to its conclusion, and many new changes were initiated before related changes were completed. The consortium lacked a framework with a common language that would unify the teams toward better outcomes. HPO became that framework and was the missing ingredient that enabled the consortium to turn around its performance and move toward HPO status. Nearly ten years later, I was privileged to be offered an exciting opportunity to join Vision-Box, a market-leading biometric technology company, as their COO and drive a fundamental transformation. Vision-Box had achieved significant success since its inception almost eighteen years ago however, the time had come for the organization to undergo a transformation to enable it to scale up to service its global marketplace. Drawing from my experiences from ATLAS, adopting the HPO Frame- work and striving for HPO status was the obvious choice to power up the transformation across Vision-Box. As André highlights in this book, you have the “hard” structural side of an organization, and people are the “soft” human side of the organization. The hard structural side of the transfor- mation (defining the operating model, designing the organizational struc- ture, and improving or introducing processes) will have little to no value