The Performance Management Conundrum

Senior Leaders who have performance management and employee engagement as a strategic objective face a conundrum. As we continue to dig into corporate needs, the same message continues to come through. Senior management knows that the economy isn’t going to allow them to resume the upward trajectory of growth like the good old days. As we continue to discuss ways to achieve these objectives, the conversation always comes back to performance management: Doing more with what you have. As any leader knows, (more…)

Successful businesses work. There are many definitions of success in business. One component common to all business success definitions is the generation of positive cash flow in the short-, mid- and long-term. Many variables factor into a business’s ability to generate positive cash flow; from an operations perspective, none are more critical than culture, strategy and execution. In this post we will focus on (more…)

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 (more…)

Large cash positions coupled with historically low interest rates make mergers and acquisitions an obvious strategic choice for companies to significantly improve their performance. As companies increase their Mergers and Acquisitions activity, there is a need for a well thought through program assure the successful integration of new companies with different cultures and business processes. It is reported by KPMG that (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 (909) 949-9083 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 (909) 949-9083 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, (more…)

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 (more…)

Recently I was asked to comment on the question: Who is or should be responsible for Strategic Planning? Several people responded. Here is my response: Of course I agree that the CEO is the ultimate decider of the final strategic plan. Strategy is the CEOs primary job and also one of the key areas of attention for the Board. While I agree with the philosophy of the other respondents, I don’t believe the responses take the issue of “who” to a deep enough level. I respectfully suggest that the CEO get input from many fronts. Unfortunately, too often, the CEO’s executives are telling him/her just what they think the CEO wants to hear (more…)

In preparation for the keynote at the 2010 Confab meeting of professional management consultants, we asked about a thousand global business leaders to respond to an online survey about their use of and experience with management consultants. When over a hundred executives responded within a few hours, I knew I had hit a nerve.

83 respondents out of 107 replied that they hire management consultants. They represent a broad range of industries from healthcare/pharma and financial services to manufacturing, retail and agriculture. Here are some of their comments, minus specific identifiers. They range in size from start-ups to about USD $120 Billion

Ninety three percent said (more…)

Good times, bad times, you know we’ve had our share….  Anytime is a good time to reexamine the principle of “getting Lean” or improving processes by applying a set of tools that will deliver significant reductions in cost and lead time.  Sigma techniques as championed by “blackbelts” is often the rallying cry.

But what about Quality (with or without a big Q)? Is quality or Total Quality now passé, having been supplanted by Lean and/or Six Sigma? Are all of these synonyms? Are they just dressed-up, consultant-speak ways of describing historic “best manufacturing practices?” Do they work together, or do they (more…)