KeyneTalk

The annual dance

  It's that time of year again!  Yes, it is Thanksgiving and the start of the Christmas season, but it's also the start of the performance appraisal season.  Manager's everywhere are starting to get the dreaded forms from their HR departments.  They will soon be dusting off last year's performance appraisal forms to see how many goals from last year have been completely forgotten.  Many are even starting to develop that knot in their stomach about having to go through the arduous process again. 

     It is also the season for all the articles about how bad the performance appraisal process is or how to make it at least somewhat effective.  I have had at least twelve people email the link to the latest Wall Street Journal article: Performance Reviews Need Some Work, Don't Meet Potential.  Every year there are a series of articles published lamenting the fact that we seem to be stuck in this trap with no effective alternative.

  I have a novel idea.  How about we stop appraising performance and start managing it?!

The problem is that their are many programs out there that claim to be performance management programs but are really just the same old performance appraisal process dressed up to look better.  How can you tell the difference?  An effective performance management process has several characteristics:

1. The most important element of performance management is communication.  So the process should facilitate frequent progress meetings and feedback between manager's and employees.  If there are less than 4 progress meetings per year, then you have a measurement/appraisal process.
2. The emphasis should be on goals that are linked to initiatives and not on competencies linked to training and development.  Performance management is about leading and guiding groups and individuals toward the accomplishment of organizational initiatives.
3. Goals should be linked directly to corporate initiatives thereby creating direct line of sight from the strategic plan to the initiatives and down to the individual goals within the organization.
4. Employees should enter their own data; managers should never enter the data for employees.
5. Core Values should be infused throughout the process.

     Why not set a New Year's resolution to change from the antiquated performance measurement/appraisal systems to a true performance management system? 

     Yes, we can help you with that.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Performance Measurement is Not Performance Management!

    

Traditional performance management systems have either measured organizational financial data and short-term profitability or individual employee performance. Neither method has proved successful, so each has evolved to include additional measures: organizational financial performance expanded to include customer, internal business process, and learning and growth measures via the Balanced Scorecard, and individual performance appraisal measures expanded from assessing subjective dependability and commitment to measuring performance on objective goals.  Over the years, both methods came to be known as performance management systems even though they continued to measure rather than manage performance.

     

As such, they both have retained the underlying philosophy that “if it can’t be measured, it can’t be managed.” This philosophy is rearward-looking rather than forward-looking. Measuring something implies that the thing has already occurred, while managing something implies that the thing is in progress and is continually being guided, directed, and, well, managed.  True, part of management involves measuring progress over time in order to determine where improvements and/or changes should be made going forward, but measurement is only part of management, not the end state.

     

We find that there is very little actual performance management going on in organizations; virtually all of it is performance measurement.  And organizations are so used to taking their yardstick out to measure things that they don't realize the tremendous positive difference it would make if they started managing those things instead.

Misconceptions about performance management

In working with companies over the years we’ve noticed a few common misconceptions about performance management:

1.     Performance management has become synonymous with performance measurement.  Most, if not all, of the automated “performance management” systems in the marketplace today are actually performance measurement (i.e. performance appraisal) systems.

2.     When we use the term performance management, what most people think of is performance measurement – a process of looking back to see what’s been accomplished during the year, usually through performance appraisal- and Balanced Scorecard-type measurements.  Performance measurement is not the same as performance management.  True performance management, as we define it, is “dynamically and actively leading, guiding and directing groups and individuals toward the accomplishment of organizational initiatives.” 

3.     Many executives think of performance management as an HR function, probably because they intuitively understand that the performance “management” systems out there are actually glorified performance appraisal systems.  Indeed, managing the performance appraisal process is an HR function, but true organizational performance management is not.  Organizational performance management is about managing the accomplishment of organizational initiatives and the strategic plan.  That’s owned by senior management and is a core responsibility of every manager down to first line supervisors. 

4.     Most organizations seem to treat planning as a task.  They get the management team together once a year, map out a plan for the upcoming year, and then check that task off their to-do list.  The plan tends to sit on a shelf and get dusty until the next year when they repeat the process.  Most management teams don’t do a very good job of communicating that plan to the rest of the organization.  They also don’t link all of the department and individual goals to the initiatives in the plan, so they never really operationalize the plan.

Read more about organizational performance management at www.keyneinsight.com.