Book excerpt: Lasting success is not a happy accident. It requires a proven framework coupled with replicable techniques to achieve true business integration, excellence, and accountability. Journey to Excellence teaches leaders how to implement and leverage five key principles to achieve immediate and ongoing success: 1. Be a master of (cultural) change Making positive and lasting organizational change begins with an in-depth cultural assessment and culminates in a restatement of your organization's most deeply held values that will revitalize your efforts and inspire change. Journey to Excellence teaches you how to support a culture that embraces innovation, empowers members to act, and rewards true quality. 2. Expand your definition of excellence What does excellence mean to you? How do you translate this definition into workable techniques and processes to maximize organizational effectiveness? We all want to be great at what we do. How you go about this, however, is the key to true results. Journey to Excellence can help your organization uncover the right approach to attain lasting success. 3. Integrate for maximum leverage Where is your organization vulnerable to market factors outside of your immediate control? Journey to Excellence teaches you how to identify and alter your organizational structure to protect yourself from market fluctuations, provide maximum return on investment, and ensure long-term viability and stability. 4. Measure the right things (and act on the results!) Gathering information is only half the battle. What you measure and how you analyze the data determines the value of your efforts. Journey to Excellence will help you understand how to implement benchmark-driven innovation so that you exceed your goals and objectives consistently and effectively. 5. Become a "best place to work" Leadership through service is the key to achieving never-before imagined transformation. Journey to Excellence shows you how to enhance attraction and retention, strengthen loyalty, improve productivity, increase employee satisfaction, and achieve results that positively impact your bottom-line. Creating a sustainable, customer-focused, and profitable business requires hard work and a systematic approach to process management. Journey to Excellence teaches you how to apply a proven framework to your own organization to attain a new level of success and fulfillment. A special note for readers in health care management: Beyond implementing a proven and effective organizational framework that supports breakthrough quality, Journey to Excellence provides special insight on the power of physician partnerships, sharing the secrets behind Javon Bea's revolutionary W2 Physician Partnership Model. Today's health care climate presents special challenges for physician networks. Financial success is elusive and keeping physician staff members happy can seem like a daunting task. Reimbursement is declining and practice costs are rising. Physicians and hospitals find themselves increasingly competing for ancillary revenue and outpatient procedures. By defining a new approach to physician compensation, hospitals, health systems, and physician groups can reinvent themselves and achieve long-term financial and cultural success that supports the goals of all stakeholders in an innovative manner. The W2 Physician Partnership Model (WPPM) is a tailor-made model of tiered compensation based on productivity that effectively aligns hospital, health system, and physician interests, establishing a foundation for a cooperative culture to improve patient quality. The WPPM is truly unique in that it combines the best of private practice, which leverages individual motivatio