Managing Performance in the times of Collaboration

As Organizations move towards harnessing power of a truly collaborative environment, identifying & rewarding individual performances can become a tricky business. Where does an individual contribution ends, and team’s output begins?

In the last century, with the assembly line / piece-rate structures, identifying & hence compensating for a worker’s output used to be a cake walk. The work would be specialized, with little degrees of overlap with the other worker on line. 

Now, each day the world moves one more step away from segregation and towards integration. The most valuable companies are those that are able to connect diverse fields of expertise into a meaningful way.  Today, an individual genius might be able to create a complex structure, but it's growth & sustenance will take more than one mind. To support this, Collaboration as a core value is getting rapidly adopted. The gush of flatter hierarchical structures, open office designs, focus on cross-functional work are testimonies to this.

However, even with the best of intentions, a seemingly collaborative culture on the surface can hide undercurrents of mis-managed individual performance, and the unfulfillment that comes with it. If not checked well, and in time, it can lead to a drastic drop in performance over multiple work cycles, and can possibly result in regrettable attrition.

When the Organization’s performance management doesn’t have the element of collaboration, here are a few things that may happen :

• Organization wants peers to support each other, work together, and deliver more as a team with high inter-dependencies. However at year-end, resorts to pitting one employee against another as a way of managing performances.
• Organization wants to highlight, recognize only strong individual players. Ignoring that behind each A player, there is an army of B & C players creating that support environment.
• Organization wants to create a high performance culture, but ends up rewarding those who are best at ‘impression management’ or ‘delivering at any cost’; ignoring the ‘how’ and only focusing on ‘what’.

So how do we go about creating a system for fair performance management, while keeping Collaboration as an important element? 

• Encourage transparency & set clear expectations while setting up team goals. Within the team, every individual’s role should be clearly defined. While there will be dependencies, defining clear roles will bring in accountability while the team works and clarity for Managers when they assess individual performances.
• For cross-functional teams, Managers should ensure constant communication, with not just the intent of following up on overall progress but also of individual performance reviews.
• Build an environment where every team member feels open & secure to give out critical feedback to their peers, especially if the other is not pulling up their load. Ignoring non-performance is as good as encouraging it.

As the quote attributed to Ratan Tata says, “If you want to walk fast, walk alone. But, if you want to walk far, walk together”.

Organizations can reach exceptionally far by harnessing Collaboration. We just need to make sure not to leave anyone down & behind in this journey!

Views are personal.