---
title: "Fitness Australia’s Cultural Clarity"
id: "20500"
type: "post"
slug: "fitness-australias-cultural-clarity"
published_at: "2013-11-15T12:00:19+00:00"
modified_at: "2026-03-15T21:28:33+00:00"
url: "https://associationsnow.com/2013/11/15/fitness-australias-cultural-clarity/"
markdown_url: "https://associationsnow.com/2013/11/15/fitness-australias-cultural-clarity.md"
excerpt: "How Fitness Australia's performance reviews help drive the organization's culture."
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  - "E-learning"
  - "labor organization"
  - "Leadership"
  - "live performance"
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  - "Article"
taxonomy_role:
  - "Association CEO / Executive Director"
  - "Director"
  - "Executive Team"
  - "Manager"
  - "VP"
taxonomy_persona:
  - "Association Professionals"
---

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## How Fitness Australia’s performance reviews help drive the organization’s culture.

“You can’t say something drives the success of the whole enterprise unless you can tell me how it shows up in your workplace,” says Jamie Notter, management consultant and coauthor of [Humanize: How People-Centric Organizations Succeed in a Social World (opens in a new tab)](http://books.google.com/books?id=-dDVuezKhNIC)
.

With that in mind, Notter and Robert Barnes, former general manager of operations at Fitness Australia, overhauled the organization’s performance reviews to clearly describe and define the desired behavioral qualities of [its “Team Cool” culture](http://associationsnow.com/2013/11/team-cool-fitness-australias-approach-to-active-values/)
. “The hardest part was actually writing the language,” Barnes says.

Here are two examples of how Fitness Australia’s performance describes high- and low-performance behavior:

### Decentralization

**Low-Performance Behaviors:** Overemphasizes hierarchical or central control, either by holding on too tightly or by abdicating responsibility. Blocks others who want to exercise ownership behavior.

**High-Performance Behaviors:** Always seeking new ways to embrace decentralization and extend to colleagues the opportunity to speak, decide, and act in the best interests of the organization.

### Learning

**Low-Performance Behaviors:** Overly focused on blame (or avoiding it), unwilling or unable to work through difficult conversations. Frequently reverts to what is already known or existing areas of comfort.

**High-Performance Behaviors:** Disciplined about having conversations that generate deep learning and not afraid to change as a result. Embraces the learning opportunities in failure.

(provided by Fitness Australia)

[Joe Rominiecki](https://associationsnow.com/author/joe-rominiecki/)

Joe Rominiecki is a contributing editor to Associations Now.

[More articles by this author](https://associationsnow.com/author/joe-rominiecki/)

Tags: [#E-learning](https://associationsnow.com/tag/e-learning/)
 [#labor organization](https://associationsnow.com/tag/labor-organization/)
 [#Leadership](https://associationsnow.com/tag/leadership/)
 [#live performance](https://associationsnow.com/tag/live-performance/)

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