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Most organizations have some form of people and performance systems for activities like recruitment, training, talent development, remuneration, rewards and performance management.

Systems are a critical enabler or inhibitor of your ability to achieve your goals and maximize your contribution. In fact, when your goals and systems are in conflict, the systems will win six days a week and twice on Sundays. You may value collaboration, but if you only reward individual performance, you will get competition.

Your ability to affect changes in your organization’s performance systems may be limited, or even impossible. In an organization of any scale, performance systems are typically imposed from the senior-most level of the company.

The good news is that even if you can’t change the actual system, you can change how you engage with it; you can practice effective performance management. Performance management includes the performance system itself, as well as the beliefs and practices that surround the system.

Performance management is most effective when;

• It’s an everyday conversation, rather than a once-a-year event.
• Your bias is toward the future rather than the past, so that you are constantly helping your team members to move toward the future you all want.
• You act more like a coach than a judge.
• You create meaningful conversations, rather than discussions that are transactional or a ‘tick the box’ exercise.
• You shift ownership of the process to the team member, by encouraging self-set goals in line with your team’s goals.
• You create a safe environment for team members to ‘stretch’ without fear that their stretch targets will become the new baseline.
• Each team member has the autonomy they need in order to embrace the accountability you have assigned to them.
• You view this conversation as an opportunity for team member development, not just performance management.

INSPIRATION FROM OTHERS

“Trying is the first step toward failure.” – Homer Simpson

“Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” – Isaac Asimov

QUESTIONS TO REFLECT ON

• How frequently do you have performance conversations with your team?
• What is the impact of these conversations on your team and you?
• Based on the list above, how can you improve the quality of these conversations?

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