Is 2021 the time to make the radical changes that are needed to performance management?

We all know it’s been a weird old time. But it has also been a time when we have embraced knew things and done things we never thought possible. From home-schooling to family quizzes. From realising that those meetings really could all be done by email to just picking up the phone to ask how a colleague is.

So, if 2020/21 is the year when change seemed more possible, isn’t it time to fundamentally change the performance management system?

If it were me this is what I would do. I put these ideas here only as a challenge to current thinking, and I would welcome your own thoughts in the thread below, to add to the debate.

1.    In this year when GCSEs and A-Levels (in the UK) have been cancelled, we will see a debate rage on about the fairness of teacher assessments. If trained, experienced teachers are doubted for their assessment ability, then what does that say about the average manager? Now more than any other time (surely) we can take the decision we know is right and ditch the ‘scores’. We know (and plenty of research shows) that they are unfair, divisive and demotivating. Time to ‘Just Do It’!

2.    Your managers are good people (if not good assessors), they need clear direction. They know that (this year especially) they should focus more on development / motivation / well-being issues (or whatever you want them to) and less on something their line report didn’t do in September because they had the kids at home. However, that ‘Performance Review mentality’ is a pervasive habit. Break the habit by giving them one clear goal for this year – such as “Spend an hour understanding your line report’s feelings about XXX”. That’s all.

3.    It’s the conversation, not the process, right! We all know this and we have tried to do what we can to encourage that, but managers are scared of getting it wrong and fall back on the forms and the process. Remove the forms and make the process one step – “Have a conversation”.

4.    And if we think that that makes it too scary for our managers, then what should we do to help them? Provide them with a 20-minute interactive e-learning package on how to have a great developmental conversation? No, you build their confidence and capability by helping them to practice a different style of conversation, in a safe space, with a Practice Coach who can give them feedback and improve their performance.

If this sounds too radical for your organisation this year, but you know that what you have done in the past will not work in 2021, then please let me know what you would like to see being done differently.

And if you want to know about how we have helped clients improve managers’ capability and confidence to have a great development conversation, through the simple but powerful expedient of practice then get in touch.

I am grateful to my fellow L&D Outlaws for providing the stimulus to get me thinking about this.