How Performance Management Drives Results

I walked in to a client’s office and was presented with the following performance update:

Project goals had been missed for three consecutive quarters.  For next quarter, the team expected to only meet half of their goals. When I asked leadership how their teams were doing on goals for the year, they responded, “ Pretty good”. 

What’s wrong with this picture?

If your leadership isn’t pushing for achievement, trust me, your team isn’t planning on delivering. What’s most amazing about performance managers, is that there is a false belief that writing down a goal or even measuring that goal somehow equates to meeting that goal. I said meeting, not exceeding. 

If you really want teams to exceed goals, all your goals, then you had better have a robust performance management strategy in place. In my last post, I discussed talent management and how to plan out the role you need your team to fill. In this post, I ask - what does it mean to translate that role definition into cohesive goals, and drive teams to exceed expectations.

1. Career paths are less common that you believe. Consider two scenarios. The first: you’re an Engineer told that “everyone does everything” and you will have the opportunity to progress in the organization if you show both “soft” and “hard” competencies. Sound great? Be suspicious. Consider an alternative: you’re an Analyst told that exceeding defined goals each year puts you on track to become an Associate and beyond that a Manager. Additionally, each of those roles has explicit expectations with regard to productivity, personal development, and organizational contributions. Which would you rather be, the Engineer or the Analyst? Effective career pathing need not be ignored if you want team members to stay for the long term.
2. Reward systems are a favorite topic for leaders. The reason is because it’s easy to fall in to the trap of dangling the carrot and walking away. While this can be effective for some highly motivated teams, more likely you will find teams floundering without clear goals. Consider setting a reward system that is progressive, with defined milestones. Start by translating high-level goals in to meaningful actions by your team members and invite them to participate in this planning activity. Doing so, ensures buy-in when goal setting and helps to hold team members accountable to each goal’s success. When you do finally reward teams, you want to do so shortly after achieving goals. Waiting to reward a team, even if it’s just praise, will detach that reward from the recent success and mute the impact.
3. Feedback comes in many different forms and is the information individuals receive to help hone their actions. I often discuss the importance of leadership acknowledging desired behavior when it occurs. And therein lies the most difficult part of feedback, the need to provide it often and consistently. Annual reviews are too often poorly utilized, but good leaders know to never wait until the end of a year to provide a performance evaluation. Even end of project reviews, which help to identify training gaps, can have too much of a time lag. However, immediate feedback ensures team members are always driving forward with the right mind set, even in the face of adversity. One caution here is that we often look for feedback from many sources, but the best source isn’t a mentor or even a manager, but the people employees directly work with. A culture of constructive feedback can be the difference between stagnation and performance.

With so much focus on the here and now, performance managers forget that they have long-, mid-, and immediate-term tools in their toolkit. Consider the career paths, reward system, and constructive feedback that are part of your daily operations. If your teams aren’t yet receiving this clarity from you, then now is the time to get performance back on track. 

After all, every team should be able to clearly articulate what exceeding expectations looks like.