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Working Effectively in a Performance Management Framework

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Frontline police called on the Government to reverse the target-driven culture that has forced them to make “ludicrous” decisions such as arresting a child for throwing cream buns.

The Police Federation annual conference in Blackpool will debate whether judging officers purely on how many arrests, cautions or on-the-spot fines they can deliver is making a mockery of the criminal justice system.

A not untypical story of modern life – but are ‘targets’ really the problem?

Would dropping targets help?

Or do we choose to blame the targets – when it is really poor management in a target driven organisation that is to blame?

How can managers prevent this type of gaming the system and ensure that support progress rather than act as a catalyst to stupidity?

What would you have done as the Officer in Charge – when you saw that arrest on the record books?

What would you have done before hand to ensure that the officer would have thought twice before adding this to their ‘portfolio of success’.

Happy to put up a small prize for the most useful response!

Why Feedback Does Not Work

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People often tell me that when they give feedback it just does not work the way they hope. Either the feedback is ignored, or it causes a while load of justifications, excuses and rationales leading to a heated debate and a deterioration in the relationship.

There are several reasons why feedback might not have the desired affect and cause more problems than it cures. By far the most common reason for feedback failure is that the relationship is not right. We only accept and act on feedback when it comes from someone we trust and respect.  Giving feedback to someone who does not trust and respect you is not only a waste of breathe – it is likely to make the situation, certainly your relationship, worse.

Before you can give effective feedback, you have to earn the right (and this is not about just being the boss).  As well as trust and respect it is important that the receiver of the feedback knows that your motivation for offering feedback is that you want them to suceed in doing a great job.  They have to know that you are not putting them down or playing power games – you are sincerely trying to help them do things well.

So the next time you have an opportunity to give feedback – ask yourself – does this person trust and respect me enough to value my feedback?

Secondly ask yourself whether your motivation to give feedback is to help them to get better at their job?

If the answer to either of these questions is no, then you are better off keeping the feedback to yourself.  Instead find a way to work on your relationship so that in future your  feedback will be welcomed and acted upon.

PMN Podcast 1 Now Available

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Our first podcast explaining what we are trying to achieve with the Progressive Managers Network is now available at: http://www.podcastfm.co.uk/about.php?id=238

In our first podcast Lee asks Mike the story and ethos behind PMN and how Common Purpose and Gordon Ramsey has influenced its development! Why is it so different? A general FAQ type podcast for everyone who is a member of, or interested in PMN.

Hope you enjoy the show! We would love your feedback so that we can make it better.

Coaching – Let’s reclaim an every day management tool!

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The profession of coaching continues to grow at an amazing rate. A search on google for coaching yields 78 MILLION pages. And as the profession develops, coaching becomes more and more complicated. There are professional coaching qualifications, codes of practice and ethics and a library of academic research on best coaching practice. Just to keep up to speed with developments in coaching seems to be a full time job.

However, coaching is not this hard. Many managers avoid coaching because of the complexity that has developed around it. The simple truth is that every manager should be coaching every member of their team, all of the time. All they need is to use a simple and practical coaching model and good interpersonal skills. And most improtasntly they must want their team members to do well. So much in coaching depends on intent.

Re-discovering coaching as a simple, quick and efficient way of building ability and developing excellent teams offer managers a straight-forward way to stand head and shoulders above most of their peers – who continue to believe that coaching is an expensive and usually outsourced development solution.

The Truth about Performance Management?

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Over recent decades the performance management industry has grown like topsy. Re-engineering, Balanced Scorecard, Lean Thinking, Strategy Mapping – there has never been such a choice of techniques to improve the performance of your organisation. Yet more often than not they simply don’t work. They cost a lot in both time and money…but just don’t deliver the highly anticipated and much needed returns.

So what does work?

In my experience significant performance improvements can be made by investing in the quality of line management, and in particular, excellent people management. In the vast majority of the organisations that I see three simple processes, well trained and efficiently executed provide the springboard for continual improvement of performance. These are:

  1. weekly, half hour meetings between the manager and each of their direct reports – 121s;
  2. regular use of effective and professional feedback, both affirmative (letting people know when they did something that you want to see more of) or adjusting (letting them know when they have done something that you do not want to see repeated);
  3. coaching each and every team member – all of the time – to help them to improve their performance.

Of course there are many, many more things that help to improve performance – but unless managers are doing these three things routinely and consistently well – then investment in any other approach is likely to be severely undermined by poor management.

So why are these processes so often over-looked?

Well firstly they are not very sexy! These are every day, almost mundane, processes that build trust, improve communication, enhance skills and add value to the organisation. To many managers who spend every day fighting fires and averting disaster this is most definitely NOT what management is about.

Secondly they sound like they will take a lot of time. The first excuse that I am usually given by a manager for not doing 121s is that they don’t have time, ‘I have 10 direct reports – you really think I can spend 5 hours a week doing 121s?’. Well the truth is that the 5 hours of 121s probably saves 10 hours of time spent responding to ad hoc requests for the managers time, or dealing with problems that could have been easily avoided if communication was better and trust was stronger.

The third most common objection is that feedback will cause conflict. It risks lifting the lid on Pandora’s Box and letting out all sorts of opinions, beliefs and personal prejudices that can only damage relationships.

And the final objection is that ‘no-one does this stuff around here’. Well exactly – no wonder the organisation is looking for tools and techniques that will help performance improve.