Making Performance Management Part of the Daily Routine

We’ve all done it — once a year, we set goals we don’t revisit until the next year rolls around. It’s

why performance management doesn’t seem to work. It also makes it really easy for people to skate along, doing well but perhaps not going above and beyond.

Measuring great performance requires understanding where the baseline is and enforcing that every day. Daily performance management not only encourages the right behaviors, it also helps address any concerns early on, before they become problems. Employees can stick to the right goals, and management can align performance with the business’s needs.

Here are tips on how to make performance management part of the daily interactions you have with employees:

·       Break goals into actionable items: Large goals that require a year to accomplish can be daunting. But if you break the goal into smaller items, you can include how someone could work daily toward accomplishing that goal. Then when you do regular check-ins, it’s much easier to talk about progress.

·       Find ways to recognize good performance: Whether your company has an official recognition program or not, take time to say, “Good job,” when an employee is performing well. Make the recognition as specific as possible, especially if it relates to one of their goals. For example, if an employee built an internal enablement guide that also included engaging messaging and creative design (just like an ad campaign), say, “Good job applying marketing practices to internal training to help us increase adoption.”

·       Adjust as you go: Goals set at the beginning of the year might have to change over time. Making performance management part of a daily routine means it’s much easier to see when a goal might need to be modified or corrected. Check to make sure that adjusting the goal still fits into the company’s strategy. By updating the goal, it’s more likely the employee will succeed than if the goal and the daily work are no longer aligned.

Performance management can be effective if it’s part of daily management practices. It might require managers to be more proactive about goals and define action items with employees if internal performance software or processes aren’t set up for that level of detail. But the results will be worth it if you make the extra effort.

Narrowing Skill Gaps for Employees

The employee without skill gaps is somewhat unusual. Sure there are superstars with few, if any, performance issues, but those are few and far between. Performance management should include not only the recognition of the gaps, but a plan to help close them.

Achieving desired performance outcomes is at least partially achieved through accurate identification of performance gaps and the application of appropriate training and development to reduce or eliminate the gaps. Effective performance management processes include both of these important elements.

When effective mapping of learning content to competency gaps is part of the performance management "infrastructure" in an organization, performance gaps tend to close faster and more completely. This stems from the fact that there is a much higher level of matching training and development efforts to areas where employees are weakest and need the most attention. Without this level of mapping there is usually a shotgun approach to training and development efforts.

ASTD reports that "Organizations are linking learning to performance and the bottom line, and they understand the relationship between creating a skilled workforce and achieving enterprise-wide success." The linkage between performance, learning, and higher levels of profitability is difficult to deny. Intuitively we would expect there to be a higher level of success and much less waste in the training process if attention is focused on closing performance gaps rather than painting employees with a broad development brush.

Training for the sake of training alone is a very bad idea and consumes valuable cash that can be applied more appropriately elsewhere. But when training is specifically linked to performance, training expenditures that are essentially thrown out the window are reduced dramatically.

Performance Reviews as a Roadmap for Success

At Reviewsnap, we often talk about how a performance review can take on the form of a personal business plan for individual employees. When a review combines competency measurement, goal definition and measurement, and a defined development plan for the upcoming review period, the employee has a road map for success. A business plan is really just a road map for success for the business.

We suggest making the review process more "strategic" and results-oriented than is sometimes the case. Thinking of the performance review as not only a feedback mechanism, but as a success plan will be more productive for the employee and will often yield much better results for all involved. Also, employees feel better about the process when feedback is accompanied by a legitimate and thorough plan for helping them be successful.

The first step in moving along this path is to begin moving work units toward a more complete approach to performance management in general. This represents a cultural change and will likely need to be accomplished incrementally. But graduating to this more strategic kind of approach can produce various results including, but not limited to:

- A more focused employee.
- Better engagement due to very clear goals and known support from management in terms of assisting in the employee's development.
- A platform on which the manager and employee can communicate commonly and effectively about expected results.
- Performance reviews that really have some "teeth" and review sessions that tend to be more productive and ultimately more fruitful in terms of results.
- A year-to-year plan that the employee "owns" and feels positive about being able to achieve.

Certainly effective communication on the part of the manager is important in this process, but thinking about performance reviews in a more strategic framework should produce better overall results over time.

Can You Become a Better Strategic Thinker?

Thinking strategically doesn't always come easy for most of us. Or we get sidetracked by all of the operational stuff that comes up on a daily basis and we get away from looking at our businesses or work units from a strategic perspective.

So we offer a few things you can do to help ensure that some level of strategic thinking is in place on a consistent basis:

1.Remember that the foundation for a sound strategic plan is goals. They provide direction and focus and well as a basis for finding alternative ways of achieving them. Never lose sight of your goals.

2. Forget about "the way it's always been done". Think about how things could be and/or should be. Get outside your comfort zone!

3. Practice creative thinking. Tell yourself that no idea is too crazy. Generate as many ideas as possible. As an example, take one of your products or services and list all of the possible ways it could be marketed remembering that anything goes. Force yourself to be creative and think "outside the box".

4. Analyze and process data and information in an unbiased manner. Good long-term strategies are developed around good information and sound logical reasoning. Take the time to gather good data/information, but don't get caught up in over-analyzing things.

5. Look outside the operating environment. Learn to look at customers and markets available to you. Get externally focused. Understand your markets well and think about how new approaches might make sense.

6. Think in strategic terms rather than task-oriented terms. For example, suppose a goal is to grow revenues at an annual rate of 9%. This sets off all kinds of task-oriented thinking; staff needs, promotional materials, space planning, etc. Think more in terms of alternative strategies for growing the business....new ways to penetrate existing markets with a new product for example.

7. Become a thinker. Take time to sit back and clear your mind of details and just think. Think less about details and more about your goals and how to achieve them. Step back and think big picture on a regular basis. Find quiet time to do it. Thought can be the most productive form of work.

8. Generate as many ideas as possible. Quantity will often breed quality. Also, some ideas can come together to form very effective strategies.

A Pee Wee Herman "Listening Culture"

Sometimes managers just talk too much. Our mantra is listen more, talk less. Employees who believe they are being heard with resulting changes or tweaks to how things are run are generally the most satisfied in their jobs. They feel empowered and they feel they are a part of the process. Those who don't feel they can share ideas, concerns and frustrations freely with their managers tend to feel isolated and constrained.

It isn't uncommon for employees to feel that they aren't being heard. Listening to employees is a great way to get far greater buy-in from employees. What are their frustrations? What ideas do they have for improving things? Are there things the manager isn't aware of that could help in addressing a number of performance and morale issues?

A critical point here is that you want to avoid listening just to listen. Employees will quickly sniff out the manager who is insincere about asking employees to sound off. They will wonder what is up. Why is the manager suddenly asking for input when it rarely, if ever, happened before? If a manager is going to be a good listener, it's important to actively listen and then use feedback from employees to move things forward and improve things.

A trap to avoid is believing everything you hear. The feedback from employees can range anywhere from completely accurate to complete rubbish. Over some period of time, astute managers form opinions about what is really happening by listening to all employees and piecing things together. Good listeners are active listeners and they ask good questions that will draw out important information and help sort out the inaccuracies.

Creating a listening culture takes some time. Building trust is probably the most crucial element of the process. Employees have to feel they can trust managers to keep confidential information they share and to use that information in a positive and productive way. When managers blab and misuse the information, there can be no traction toward a culture of active and productive listening.

Does your organization have a "listening culture"? If so, what does it look like? Is is embedded in such a way that the feedback from employees feels natural and not contrived? Do employees more often than not bring forward good ideas and offer solutions rather than just problems? Are employees comfortable sharing information? Take a look around and see what you find.

Managers in the Danger Zone

There is a natural tendency on the part of some people to think that what they do is more important than what others do in an organization. Many of these people are simply egomaniacs who live in a fantasy world of sorts where they are in some way superior to everyone else.

We talk a lot about leaving the excess ego at the door when you come to work in the morning. The problem is that it is nearly impossible for these egomaniacs to do that. Some research suggests out of control egos probably stem from some form of insecurity and the individual is likely trying to cover up for that insecurity.

A manager with a big ego and a penchant for flaunting that ego is a dangerous person in any organization. When an ego controls the behavior of a manager, all sorts of trouble tends to follow. Employees and co-workers are generally impacted in some negative manner on an all too frequent basis.

Frankly, employees working for the egomaniac grow tired of the boorish behavior. They are often blamed for problems not created by them and the manager's communication is often belittling and condescending in nature. Now there's a recipe for disengagement and reduced productivity!

A little ego is not necessarily a bad thing since it helps with confidence levels. But to allow an ego to run out of control to the point where the manager has to have that ego constantly fed is unacceptable.

People with runaway egos often are in denial about their behavior. They see themselves as tremendous employees or managers with few, if any, faults. The result of this type of attitude is resentment at best. Employees will be less likely to open up to the ego-centric employee and will often try to undermine them or work against them to show them up. Ego can have a devastating effect on team work and productivity.

A manager with a giant ego will often alienate employees. Big egos can lead to lashing out at employees to make a point. And the ego can force managers and owners to make decisions that feed the ego. Those decisions might be good for the individual's self-image, but bad for the organization in one or more ways.

If you look around your organization, do you see managers with ego issues? What has been done to address those issues? Unfortunately in some cases, the egomaniac is not coached or resists coaching because he has all the answers. In those cases, the likelihood of getting them turned around is not high.

In the context of performance management, 360 degree surveys are a great tool to help highlight core issues for any manager. In the case of the manager with an out of control ego, 360 degree surveys will usually generate a plethora of feedback that can be used for coaching and/or documentation of the problems.

In terms of performance reviews conducted by the egomaniacal manager, competency level and overall ratings tend to be lower. Why? We suspect it is a defense mechanism to push blame for departmental or work unit underperformance back onto the employees. This provides a sort of defense that the manager can point to as if to say, "hey it's not me, it's my underperforming employees".

Needless to say, dealing with these ego-centric managers is critical in any organization. Is your organization the victim of one or more of these egomaniacs?