Looking to re-design performance management? Keep sharp focus on your business goals and how performance management will support your culture for the long-term.
A Recent Challenge:
My recent client grappled with the questions many organizations grapple with: ratings or no ratings? The client was in a turnaround. When performance dips, we, as HR and Talent Management professionals reach for Performance Management “transformation”.
Ratings – so math, which we love so much as it helps us describe the world in objective way and do the same when it comes to ourselves: behavior of messy and complex humans. Given how complex we are though, we don’t want to be labeled with a number and we rebel against being boxed in.
This particular client has moved away from ratings in the past. Such history is impactful on this conversation. Given the strong opinions and reasons for the change in the past, how can we go back to ratings? Is the turnaround the best time to bring back ratings? If so, how do we communicate this to employees?
Even after communicating the move back to ratings to the entire organization, the decision was pulled last minute.
Why this matters:
Remember, culture eats strategy for breakfast. Performance management facilitates organizational goals and therefore the strategy.
What kind of culture do you need behind you when you’re turning the company around and increasing performance? A win culture.
Action/Outcome:
To win, you need a team behind you who gets how to win and wants to win together. If you’ve played organized sports (hockey here), that’s the image that appears: trusted partners who win and lose together under the guidance of a coach. Without that “we win or lose together” mentality, a team is just a group of people.
Knowing this, the following actions led to greater commitment to goals throughout the organization and engagement with performance management:
- Communal creation of organizational goals. By involving all directors and above globally in creation of organizational and team goals, we saw increase in engagement as leaders felt empowered to set the agenda for how the company will increase performance.
- Support leaders. Leaders got simple and applied training and tools to effectively cascade those goals to their teams.
- Great alignment and feedback conversations. Developed and coached leaders on leading quick and impactful conversations with their teams on on-going basis (quarterly at minimum).
- Align rewards. Aligned the compensation strategy to motivate teams.
- Leaders supporting leaders. Developed and coached leaders on leading thoughtful talent conversations with each other.
Thinking about how to simplify your next performance management transformation? Let’s talk.