The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has published the findings of its year-long study of six organisations undertaking change programmes.

The Shaping the Future report hopes to offer practical insights into achieving sustainable, long term business prosperity after tracking the progress, challenges and opportunities the six organisations including Standard Chartered, Pfizer and Xerox encountered.

In an interim report key areas that organisations need to consider to achieve sustainable organisation performance include a distributed leadership, with senior leaders setting a clear strategy and all components of the organisation being aligned to the same goals, visions and values.

A shared purpose firmly set from the top with leaders and managers at all levels ensuring employees have a strong, emotional connection to purpose and the ability to respond to both short and long term demands was also highlighted in the report.

The importance of data was also emphasised. The study found that it is not just about measuring the right things but also taking the business context into account and how this data is fed back into the organisation. Data can be used not just to prove past performance but to improve for the future.

Jill Miller, lead researcher, CIPD, said, "The key finding of our work is the extent to which sustainable performance is delivered by shared endeavour at all levels. Clear vision, strong leadership, great managers and engaged employees are all important but these all come together to deliver sustainable performance only where shared purpose exists and is supported by co-ordinated, empowered and innovative management at all levels."