realisedevelopment.net

Just another WordPress site

Performance Management, Performance Reviews and Appraisals

by

I was asked by a manager yesterday to help to clarify the difference between performance management and appraisal.  I don’t think I did a great job  so I thought I would try again!

Performance management is a system with four parts:

  1. Specify the desired level of performance for the thing you are trying to manage (people, programs, products or services)
  2. Measuring performance – collecting and recording reliable data, both quantitative and qualitative
  3. Using data to compare actual performance to what is desired – recognising gaps between what is desired and what highlighting –  variances
  4. Communicating performance information – to those that are most able to use it to make progress

Performance management can happen at a number of different levels:

  1. The performance of strategies and plans at the organisational level
  2. The performance of products, services and programs
  3. The performance of teams, department or units
  4. The performance of individual employees

A key task for a manager is to decide at which level an investment in performance management is most likely to pay off.  In my experience an investment in the performance management of individual employees drives improvements at the team, product/service and organisational levels.

Performance Reviews and Appraisals are a small but important part of good performance management at the level of the individual employee and the team or business unit.  When aggregated they can also provide powerful contributions to performance management at the organisational level.

However these ‘one-off’ annual interventions need to be supplemented by more frequent processes for measurement, monitoring and change to keep up with the dynamic context in which organisations operate.  These interventions would include:

  • 121s and quarterly reviews,
  • feedback,
  • coaching and
  • delegation.

Collectively these provide a manager with a powerful framework for the performance management of individuals and teams.  Few managers that I meet consistnelty use these intervnetions with rigour, conviction and compassion. As a consequence they are at best ‘mediocre’.  Without them the likelihood of real progress being made is small.  Putting these simple interventions into practice can transform mediocrity into excellence.

Measurement is central to performance management, but it is a double edged sword that has to handled skillfully.

“People revert to metrics out of fear, not out of vision.”

(Patrick Lencioni)

Measurement is often about the minimum requirements and rarely helps to articulate a grand design.  It tends to lead to reductionist thinking and may have little to do with the ‘high ground’ of excellence.

“Managers who don’t know how to measure what they want settle for wanting what they can measure.”

( Ackoff & Addison)

Most managers spend to little time considering what they expect from an excellent employee.

  • What would excellence look like?
  • How would I recognise it?
  • How would I ensure that excellence was contagious?

Even if managers do have a conception of excellence they rarely build in the time to collect the data and establish the working relationships necessary to achieve it.  Typically this means observing people at work, giving feedback, coaching and so on.  What Tom Peters referred to as ‘Managing By Wandering Around’.

Instead managers retreat to the easy, low ground of using what they can easily measure as a proxy for performance.  They become mole whackers.  Things that are difficult to measure are neglected, while things that are easy to measure become important.

Performance management is just a tool. It can be used to

  • move your agenda forward – what is your agenda? What does progress look like?
  • provide powerful messages about what matters – it doesn’t have to be precise, just influential – what are you trying to influence?

Making Meetings Work

by

Most managers spend more than 50% of their working hours spent in meetings of one sort or another.

Yet few have a systematic approach towards making these meetings as effective and efficient as they can be.

Many managers just tend to accept that meetings are inherently inefficient and not often effective.  That’s just how it is.  Few take responsibility for making them better.

Outstanding managers do just that.

They run tight, focused, professional meetings.

They are clear on purpose, tightly controlled and always drive towards decisions or enlightenment.

They produce actions and name people responsible for making them happen.

These meeting outcomes are effectively commmunicated and actions are always monitored to make sure that they deliver the anticipated results.

Any variations between what was anticipated and what occurred are used to drive reflection and development.  The organisation learns and future meetings are informed by the experience.

Sounds like an unreasonably high expectation of the humble meeting?  I don’t think so.  Get trained, change your expectations, behave differently and soon you will be making meetings work.

Feedback and Appraisals

by

I ran a training session for a group of 15 managers from a favourite client of mine yesterday on How to Make Appraisals Work.  I started the session as I often do with a question:

When you are being appraised what is it that you most want to get from the process?

The first answer I got?

We want feedback!

In other words we work all year and this is the one opportunity to get feedback on how we have done.

This is one of the most common problems in making appraisals work.  Managers store up feedback throughout the year and then try to fire it all off at appraisal time.

Feedback should be given little and often throughout the year to influence behaviour and performance in real time.  Not in the annual feedback fest that is sometimes called appraisal.

Communication – whose job is it?

by

“I have worked here for 6 months now, and still no-one has told me about what other parts of this organisation do.”

This complaint was aired again at a recent organisational get together that I helped to facilitate.  It is a common complaint – very common.  In essence it says ‘you the management don’t give me the information I need to do my job well’.

But whose job is communication anyway?  Historically perhaps it has been the role of management to provide staff briefings, newsletters and other communication gizmos in an attempt to disseminate what they know.

These days though the emphasis has changed.  It is no longer about management pumping out generic, hopefully useful, pieces of information.  It is now on individuals and groups of employees in teams and departments to work out exactly what they need to know, and be able to do, in order to add more value.  It is then about them taking focused action to get what they need.  The role of management is to make sure that this can happen.

The first challenge in improving communication is often to be clear on exactly whose job it is.  And as a chalenge this should not be underestimated.  Especially if you employ staff who are used to working in much more traditional management hierarchies.

Changing the emphasis from ‘being told‘ to ‘finding out‘ will not only significantly improve communication – it is also likely to stimulate innovation, creativity and a range of other cultural changes.

Managing in a Poor Culture

by

What do yo do when you are managing in an organisation that has a poor culture?

This is the subject of a great post by Miki Saxon.

She makes the point that the starting place has to be a conscious decision that this is a place where you want to be and do great work – in spite of the culture.  The alternative is to indulge in a ‘martyr complex’ the kind of ‘poor me’ response that I often hear.  This  usually appears as a belief that ‘there is nothing I can do to provide a great service and excellence until those above me get their act sorted’.

This is a convenient belief and a powerful one.  But it does little to help us make progress.  It lets us off the hook, allows us to avoid responsibility and put the blame elsewhere.  Once enough of us are doing this – and our beliefs are re-enforcing each other –  it can start to feel like a truth.  However it is still just a belief and we can choose to drop it!

So if you take a conscious decision to keep working in a poor culture you must try to reject this belief and take all the repsonsibility that you can for making things better.

You can read the full post here.