Performance Management 101
Fall is in the air in Colorado - a few cool days are wonderful...although if this winter is like last I may treat
myself to an early Christmas present and buy a
snowblower...
Performance management is a great thing to think
about this time of year. Why?
Because if you're not ecstatic about your
team's performance to date, now's the time to
start thinking about how to fix it, so that you
can budget for any training, tools or help...or
the costs of selectively replacing a few folks.
Those aren't hints or anything...but this is
the time of year to step back, ask yourself what's
working and not (devoid of personal connection with
your people) and figure out how to push the bar
up next year.
The best system I've seen for performance
management was really an ongoing project management
plan for my tasks and performance. I had a
manager years ago that used it, and I don't
think I've ever worked in a place where I felt
more on-target with my 8 hours per day.
My overall goals were linked clearly to the
team and company's larger goals, and then I built
a measurable set of milestones and tasks. My
boss and I had weekly one-on-ones to ensure
what I was producing (and how I was producing it)
was linked with larger objectives, and that any
issues or obstacles to success were quickly and
clearly identified and dealt with.
When the company changed directions (it did
often...yours does too!) and it impacted my job,
we would "close the books" on one section of
the plan, and re-allocate the time toward another
project or outcome.
While most of the goals were 'hard goals,' several
of the sub-goals were not...relationships,
learning, measuring, behavior changes that I had
to undertake to achieve the 'hard' goals.
Most performance management processes lack from
these critical elements:
1. Linking daily tasks with corporate goals -
people just assume this will happen,when being
more purposeful produces much higher level results.
2. Regular ongoing feedback. Schedule it. Do it. More
than you think you need to. (Don't make me come over
there...)
3. Only hard goals, leaving the all-critical soft
parts of the job in the realm of subjective
measurement. Some experts say that 80% of all
job failure is "soft skill" related, and yet most
performance management processes never take on the
hard work of quantifying these subjective issues.
4. Dynamism - most HR tools (job descriptions,
compensation plans, performance management tools)
quickly ossify and become useless because they
aren't active management tools, just some box a
too-busy manager has to check off...worthless in
the end.
5. Personal - the manager who is too busy to know
and take a personal interest in his/her people's
success will ultimately fail.
Look at how you define tasks, measure and offer
people feedback - do you need to improve? The
payoff will be improvement in your team's
performance?
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