Performance Conundrum

A few days back, I befronted the age old dichotomy that, unfortunately even today, a lot of talent development professionals battle with! And that is, whether to focus on the left-side of equation or the right-side of the equation; simply presented, should one focus on input or on output. I went through the whole 9 yards of explaining the conundrum, but this time, I thought of keying it down so that the new professionals in this field of expertise benefit from the same.

To begin with, I believe, we should change the way professionals in the performance management world are viewed (and more importantly, how they view themselves). The perception starts getting built by the way they are addressed... "Talent Development". I have a fundamental disconnect with the phrase, although you will find it spewed all over my profile, as well. When we say 'Talent Development', we start with the basic notion that the accountability of the development of the talent is with the person(s) responsible to develop the knowledge & skills of human resources within an organizational matrix. A left-side of the equation kind of view.

In today's day & time, with an increasing availability of technological support, shriveling timelines, ever increasing competition and the changing requirements, we need to look at the right-side of the equation even more than ever. But, that needs to be not just about how we look at ourselves, but how our customers perceive us. Its all about not just being focused on the right-side of the equation, but knowing that it indeed is the right side of the equation and ensuring that customers look at us as performance improvement professionals focused at business impact - growth, change and continuance.

While its always been talked about, but we do not find a lot of professionals being able to keep their focus on doing things which impact performance, but more importantly they are unable to get their customers see how their efforts will take the organization in becoming more effective and efficient. The need to get one aligned to objectives, outputs and outcomes is a necessity in today's world lest one wants to become obsolete.

Typically, I’m not a stickler for semantics and jargon. However, the distinction, understanding, and adoption between these two concepts in organizations should be near and dear to the performance improvement professional's heart. It can be the difference between mediocrity and the creation of lasting and sustainable change. Mediocre organizations are stuck on making decisions based on outputs. Great organizations are managing to outcomes. Having said that, both are required to be kept in view.

Let's talk about a restaurant in the business of selling hamburgers - hamburgers are outputs. An output is what is created at the end of a process. Your outputs might be training classes offered, people served, and progression of people. Outputs tell the story of what you or your organization’s activities produced. Output measures do not address the value or impact of your services for your clients.

On the other hand, an outcome is the level of performance or achievement that occurred because of the activity or services your organization provided. Outcome measures are a more appropriate indicator of effectiveness. Outcomes quantify performance and assess the success of the process. In the hamburger example, some outcomes are the consumers’ perception of quality, or the ability of the product to eliminate hunger.

Outputs (e.g. the number of hamburgers or people served) do not communicate the profitability of the company. Nor does it demonstrate how the lives of the customers were impacted. Outcomes answer questions, such as:

• Did the participants learn something new which they are able to 'do'?
• Are children achieving more in school?

These explanations, hopefully, builds a perspective for you, but to ensure that you able to achieve these, one would need to ensure that the right set of objectives are created for the beneficiaries. Let's look at the 'how'.

1. Describe the outcomes you want to achieve (why do you perform the process or service in the first place?).
2. Articulate the identified outcomes into a quantitative measure (i.e. % of clients demonstrating new behavior, % of clients coming back into treatment, etc.).
3. Ensure that your desired outcomes are actually linked to your outputs or activities. In other words, ensure that it is reasonable to expect your desired outcomes to be achieved based on your activities.
4. Implement these measures and track them over time.
5. Demonstrate your success because you have the data to confidently and appropriately communicate your impact and value.

And the other element that one needs to keep in mind when it comes to improving performances is, that the whole effort towards improving performance is not an analgesic, but a continuum of input & support which would ensure that outputs and outcomes are met.

My journey in the world of performance improvement started more than a decade back. In the past decade, the first half was focused on learning and delivering training, and the latter half is marked by learning, and facilitating performance. Whilst helping out others, I have used a visual model that I was inspired to create from Bob Mager's 'What Every Manager Should Know About Training'; and no, this is not plagiarism, but my effort to ensure that people, CEOs and CLOs, get the gist of the thought. Whenever I train facilitators, I always start with this model and has become a cornerstone of my approach of developing trainers and facilitators of performance.

___________________________________________________________

Performance Improvement

is the

‘T A R G E T’

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Performance is key to a person’s success and that is integral to the organization’s success. However, the organization is always surrounded by challenges, which hinder performance. These Performance Challenges, specifically in the area of ‘the work’, ‘the worker’, and the ‘the work environment’, are a result of a measured disparity between the ‘desired’ and the ‘actual’ state of work performance or the expected disparity between the ‘desired’ and the ‘actual’ state of work performance.

This disparity, once broken down and analyzed, leads to a specific set of gaps. These gaps could be in the 3 specific areas, such as, knowledge gaps, skill gaps, and attitudinal gaps (including motivation & expectations).

These gaps could be handled in many a ways such as by giving Training interventions, Coaching interventions, Consulting interventions and Non-Training interventions. Training interventions help build the skills and self-efficacy in the trainees.

Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy refers to the judgments people make about their abilities to execute particular courses of action – about their ability to do specific things. For example, “I know I’m a good golfer;” “I know I can beat my sales record of last year;” “I know that my fencing skill is the best in town.”

Self-efficacy isn’t about the actual skills people have; it’s about the judgments they make about the strength of those skills. People with low self-efficacy don’t believe they can do the things they actually can do. “Oh, well, I didn’t take the job offer because I didn’t think I was really good enough.”

Don’t confuse self-efficacy with self-confidence, which is a much more generalized way of referring to one’s feelings, and often refers to the expected outcomes of one’s actions. Confidence gets built as a person practices, but the person does not even start practicing unless one builds self-efficacy.

Why is self-efficacy so important?

When people don’t judge themselves able to do something they actually can do, they may not even try to do it. They may avoid trying, regardless of the strength of their skills. Therefore, if people are given the skills they need, but not the self-efficacy, they will be unlikely to perform those skills on the job. No self-efficacy, no performance.

There’s more. People with strong self-efficacy will not only be more willing to try, they will be more willing to persist in the face of obstacles, failures, or embarrassment. They are less likely to give up in the face of adversity. Thus, strong self-efficacy makes people less vulnerable to on-the-job conditions that aren’t always supportive. How can you get people to “try, try again” in the face of difficulties or failures? Make sure you (and anyone training others) apply efficacy-strengthening techniques.

Unfortunately, the development of a skill isn’t automatically accompanied by a development of strong self-efficacy. You may recall instances in which people with great deal of skills didn’t believe they had the degree of skill they did. You’ve probably seen people hang back because of a lack of self-efficacy rather than because of a lack of skill.

When people don’t judge themselves able to do something they actually can do, they may not even try to do it…

Opportunity to Perform

Without the opportunity to perform, there will be no performance. Opportunity means being provided with items such as:

• The permission (or authority) to perform
• Information about expectations
• Tools and equipment needed to perform
• A place in which to perform
• The time to perform

If you were an accomplished sitar-player but didn’t have a sitar, you wouldn’t be able to perform sitar solos. No sitar, no performance. By the same token, if you had a sitar but lived in a state where playing the sitar is prohibited, you wouldn’t be able to perform (without running the risk of being caught by the anti-sitar police). If you don’t have the tools to do your job, or a place in which to do it, you won’t be able to perform. No opportunity, no performance.

But there’s more, because mere opportunity to perform is not enough.

You can’t store training!

Use it or Lose it.   

Unlike fine wines, skills do not improve merely with the passage of time. Think about the courses you took in school. Are you as sharp on each of those subjects as you were when the course ended? No? Why not? You’ve forgotten a lot of the information or skills because you haven’t used them – because you haven’t practiced them. Essentially, Use it or Lose it.

Supportive Environment

Suppose that every time you sat down to work on a budget, your boss came in and whacked you about the head and the shoulder with a rolled newspaper or showered you with verbal abuse. How long would you continue to work on budgets? Or, suppose that you were ridiculed by your peers every time you offered a suggestion at a meeting? How long would you continue to offer suggestions? Or, suppose that every time you made a worthwhile suggestion you were requires to head the committee organized to implement it? Or, suppose that every time you came in under budget, your budget was cut off for next year. No supportive environment, no performance.

A supportive environment is one that encourages desired performance. It is environment in which workers are given reasons (incentives) to perform in the desired manner, a clear description of the results to be obtained and the standards to be met; it is an environment which the employee’s world gets a little brighter when they do it right, and a little dimmer when they don’t.

When the consequences of performing well are upside down – that is, punishments for doing it right or rewards for doing it wrong – desired performance will be difficult or impossible to sustain.

Performance then requires the presence of skill, self-efficacy, opportunity to perform, and a supportive environment. Take away any one of those ingredients and the performance will suffer, or worst, will never appear.

The diagram above although shows ‘interventions’ at a cross-section of gaps, however, it is just a diagrammatic representation.

Different types of gaps require to be treated in different ways. The ‘best way’ is the way in which the audience internalizes best and the one which impacts the learner’s performance as per the desired levels.

We should remember that all forms of gaps are not trainable from a time perspective, as time does not have an infinite value.

One, however, needs to keep in mind that Training is not the only solution for all kinds of performance problems, however, the propensity of most ‘trainers’ is to resort to ‘training’ as a solution to one & all. It’s like giving paracetamol for all kinds of ailments.

I hope this helps you to have better conversations with your customers... and with yourself!

Wish you all the best in improving other's performance... and in turn yours.