Employee Engagement and Performance Management

Over the past few years it has been well documented that technology can significantly improve employee engagement and performance management.  We see that networking has significantly increased the ability of people to accelerate their business dealings and personal relationships. Just about everyone in the workforce is familiar …Read More

I was just forwarded a study by Mark Murphy, Founder & CEO of Leadership IQ. As I read it, I was fascinated by the results. In a survey of 48,000 CEO’s managers and employees, only 13% of managers and employees and 6% of CEOs thought their year-end reviews were effective. For my entire career, I have not been part of the 13% or the 6%. Why? As the study points out, there are three primary reasons:

1. The first was a lack of differentiation: reviews aren’t synced to performance so there’s no real recognition for being a high performer
2. The second reason why people really dislike performance reviews is because the boss’ feedback isn’t relevant. Employees are walking away from performance reviews shaking their heads and wondering if the boss even knows what they did this year.
3. This is the third big reason why employees don’t like performance reviews. Most managers conduct performance reviews from a boss/employee perspective rather than using it is a coaching and mentoring tool. They sit across the desk from employees and say “this is your ‘grade’ and this is your pay” and they hope employees don’t have too many questions, because there are another dozen more reviews to conduct.

Ever feel this way as either a manager or an employee? Yearly performance appraisals are typically a “check the box activity”, that is done because it is policy, rather than using reviews as a tool to engage employees in open and transparent dialogue on the needs of the company and the employee. Yearly reviews cannot accurately reflect what an employee is being held accountable for, because the objectives of the business change real time, not yearly. Many leaders approach their business on a cyclical basis, but they are fooling themselves, because their business is dynamic and real time. They need to communicate these changes as they occur, and if that impacts the performance objective of an employee, that employee should know about it and begin supporting it. I am in favor of scrapping paper based yearly evaluations as part of an effective organizational development strategy, because I have never seen one work well, and the aforementioned study bears this out. It is truly a shame for a business to expend this much effort on yearly appraisals to achieve these kind of results. If the finance team were to do an ROI on the yearly cost and the obvious lack of benefit, they would recommend scrapping a paper based system all together. I am not against evaluations though. I am in favor of a real time system that allows for employees and managers to have two way discussions about what the business is going to hold them accountable for: clear and concise performance objectives. That is why Group50 has spent so much resource and time supporting our newest product offering Cascade: a low cost, cloud based system that gives employees, managers and senior leaders that ability to all be on the same page, to communicate with each other on how objectives are being met on a real time basis and to instantly change objectives throughout the organization when business conditions require it. You can see a short video on Cascade here. After viewing this, please post a comment, give me a call at +1 (626) 644-9746 or drop me a note at jgitney@group50.com to let me know what you think about ETW, or the study. About Group50 and the author: Group50’s focus is on strategic execution^TM. Jim Gitney, the CEO of Group50 has worked with organizations of every size in support of their movement to a culture of effective strategic execution, and realize their potential in the marketplace. You can request more information here, email info@group50.com, or call +1 (626) 644-9746 for more information. To see the services that Group50 provides, go to our home page

I was talking to several CEOs the other day about the challenges of today’s business climate and the parts of our businesses where we can continue to realize productivity gains. We all agreed that opportunities existed throughout our businesses to improve productivity, but quickly honed in on a discussion around how well our employees were aligned with our Vision, Mission, Values and Corporate Objectives. Everyone squirmed for a moment thinking about organizational alignment and organizational development, …Read More

I was speaking with a client the other day who was expressing frustration with being able to align his organization with the company’s strategies, vision, mission, values and tactics. He felt as if the yearly off site meetings and quarterly communications to employees weren’t causing the company to build a culture and performance mindset around those. He mused that there must be a better way to accelerate behaviors in the organization and create a culture of strategic execution. As we spoke further, we talked about the need for:

• Clear and concise strategies, mission, values and tactics
• Constant communications to all levels of the organization
• Measures that are cascaded down to each level that support the strategic initiatives
• Accountability for all managers and employees
• Full transparency in the company
• The ability to have communications both up and down about what is working and what isn’t
• An understanding of the company’s strategic and operating gaps

We agreed that a significant shift in culture and performance was a difficult objective. We also agreed during our conversation that cultural change isn’t achieved by yearly reviews and occasional communications. The tactics to implement such a change need to be well thought through and executed with rigor. It is one of the single most important set of activities for the company’s leaders and needed to be a daily activity. He would have benefitted from a change management framework such as Group50’s Business Hierarchy of Needs® to guide his organization’s strategic planning, change management and implementation efforts. As we talked further, we agreed to keep a dialogue going and focus on strategic alignment and performance management as part of our on-going work with his organization. Several articles with further information on this topic include:

• Performance Management as a Business Strategy
• Organizational Alignment: The Good and Bad News
• Cascade
• Morphing Evaluations Into Strategic Execution

About the author: Jim Gitney is the CEO of Group50^® and specializes in the development and implementation of manufacturing and supply chain strategies. Jim and the Group50 team are all former executives with well-known manufacturing and distribution companies who understand what it takes to put together and manage the implementation of a successful strategic plan. Group50 has designed a series of strategic assessments, workshops and strategic execution tools that eliminate the existence of Anti-Strategy. You can reach us at +1 (626) 644-9746 or send a note to info@group50.com.

Management of a project, regardless of the specific intent and outcome, can generally be accomplished using fairly universal tools and techniques with a significant amount of focus and discipline.

A team approach has been shown to gain ‘ownership’ in the project and a consistent and uniform means of communication allows participants and stakeholders to stay abreast of the project by providing feedback to the team and the project leader(s). As a business leader, you frequently find yourself faced with the dilemma of having to define, justify, and implement a significant project or program, that at its conception, is generally just a collection of ideas, proposals, ‘back of the envelope’ calculations or benefits.

To bring these together takes the focus of a …Read More

Businesses are just now beginning to wrestle with harmonizing between generations of workers and managers that may be as different as any combinations that have preceded them: the post WWII Boomers and Millennials. Can they get along and how do you create a culture of strategic execution with them?

There continue to be many Boomers still in the work force, partly due to their need to delay retirement in hopes of rebuilding wealth lost during the recent downturn. Millennials, generally viewed as having been born between about 1980 and 2001, are beginning to establish themselves professionally in the throes …Read More

In business, there are four key elements: equipment and technology, processes and systems, information, and people…but people are the active ingredient and coaching and development are critical to success. The most important work an effective leader can do is to get the most out of his/her people, helping them perform at highest levels today and grow to contribute more tomorrow. The leader who can coax “growth spurts” out of the people in the organization adds the most lasting value to the business, a value that multiplies as others take up the mantle of effective coaching and development. Yet, giving feedback to employees, particularly formal “review” feedback, is often one of the least-liked tasks for many managers. It can be uncomfortable, particularly if there are disagreements about areas for improvement. But, good coaching should be somewhat uncomfortable, at least for the person being coached. You don’t learn when you are comfortable, but when you are uncomfortable…and coaching is all about …Read More

In this age of the entrepreneur and “self-made businessperson,” it can be easy to forget that all professional careers eventually come to an end. More than once I have seen a successful, visionary leader without a succession plan: a family successor or business plan for post-retirement have to shut down their business, or have it shut down, because they did not have a plan or process to sustain the business after they move on. This situation is a shame- to see all of that value created over years of commitment and hard work evaporate due to the lack of a plan.

Exit and Transition planning is an important part of their responsibility. They owe it to their family, their employees and themselves. Many owners are “battle weary” in this continuing, tough economy, but it’s tough to retire or “semi-retire” absent confidence in the next wave of company leadership. …Read More

When I was a general manager of a leading consumer business in the mid-90’s, one of my managers came to me one day and challenged me with the statement: “We are over-emphasizing leadership and under-emphasizing management.” I pondered that, not understanding his point initially, and subsequently concluded that he was right and went about changing my leadership approach to bring management and leadership into right balance. Since that time, however, whether in my role as a business executive or presently as a consultant, I continue to see the “over-led and under-managed syndrome” regularly, even in …Read More

In the “new normal” organizations have to do with the resources they have or trade them out. As companies have slimmed down to the best performers, they are still faced with the prospect of growing them to become the future leaders of the company. Learning Maps and Knowledge Management are critical elements of successfully management companies. Growth is a basic imperative for companies today. One is to grow sales. That one is easy to identify and requires a concerted effort by an organization to focus and communicate effectively, while keeping their eye on the marketplace. If you don’t have 100% market share, growth is very possible, but every function must have the skills to support that objective through more highly skilled teams in sales, engineering, customer service, supply chain and marketing. But how do you grow organizations and create its new leaders? Learning Maps provide and Individual Development Plans (IDP) are another key element in the development of an organization. With the addition of online education and a carefully crafted learning and development map, it is possible to identify and grow near term leaders. …Read More