This week’s focus:
Performance management is a daily process, not an event!
Some of my clients are coming up to their financial year end over the next few months and there are mainly two things that are taking up their time at this time – budgeting and performance appraisals.
It always surprises me that performance appraisals are regarded by the huge majority of leaders and managers as this big event once or twice a year, an event which in some cases means a couple to several hours with each of their people.
For me, this normally suggests that their focus is in the wrong place for the rest of the year. My take on our roles as leaders and managers is that 80% of our focus should be on managing the performance of our people and developing them so that they are able to achieve each financial year’s stretch targets. Currently, far too little time and energy is spent on these two aspects which means that often our people are left to their own devices to, well, under-perform in their own way – so much so, that the term “performance management”, to most people, is not actually performance management, but rather synonymous with under-performance management! Doesn’t that tell us something!
If we consistently have the right conversations (around the critical variables which are needed to achieve their targets) regularly – weekly, fortnightly or, at worst, monthly – with each of our people in between our annual or bi-annual appraisals, there are no surprises for either party in those more formal sessions, and (each of) the sessions needn’t be longer than fifteen or twenty minutes.
More importantly, performance is almost guaranteed! Little, consistent investments in our people – big return!
Monday Morning Perspective: “Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Non-performance can always be explained away.” – Harold S Geneen
Kind regards,
Lauron
