10 Ways To Amp Up Performance Management

Step back, and put in place four key stages

Performance management is a tricky business. Of the countless approaches, frameworks, and platforms out there, it can be difficult to sift through and apply what is right for your specific organization. The solution here is to step back, and put in place four key stages: Understand, Plan, Support, and Review.

Put simply, human beings aren’t machines. If you treat them like machines, you are going to struggle. Effective performance management isn’t about tuning an algorithm, it is about understanding the expectations of your organization, the employee, and putting in place a clear, actionable plan and supporting guidance to help them succeed.

It might sound simple, and frankly it is: the very best companies draw a clear line from expectations to execution, and the ten approaches below will put you on this path and incorporate tools to evolve and improve as you deliver this work.

Understand

A role in a business is an exchange of requirements and service between the company and the individual. The only way to get effective performance management is to ensure the critical interactions between the company and individual are clearly defined. This is our first step.

Most companies will have general expectations of the role in the role description used to hire the person, but this rarely goes deep enough. Consider the dimensions in which you want to measure the role and the individual and get clarity on what you expect. For example, for a marketer, what do you expect in terms of leads, brand awareness, and GTM strategy? Summarize this as 5 – 10 measurable metrics that are agreed between you and the employee.

Similarly, you should be clear on the cultural norms that you expect outside of their specific deliverables. Do you expect them to adhere to specific working hours? How much do you expect them to travel?

Many of these organizational cultural expectations are either unspoken or undocumented and unmet expectations can cause problems and frustration. Get clarity on this and again ensure they are well communicated to the employee (and more broadly in the company.)

Every role in your organization needs a career path forward. Sadly, far too many organizations don’t have a clear sense of how staff can not just meet and exceed expectations, but also how they can earn their way up the ladder. As an organization grows, this can become a problem with many staff lingering in the same position despite exceptional performance.

Don’t depend on your managers to simply observe your rockstars. Define how success criteria maps to career opportunities and ultimately promotions. Incorporate employees in this process: they will be more engaged if they feel they helped shape the career ladder. 

Plan

Clear expectations don’t mean anything unless they are used to formulate a positive future outcome. This is where clear, constructive planning comes in. Again, be sure to include your employees in this planning by soliciting and incorporating feedback. This will give them ‘skin in the game’ which can dramatically increase their chances of success (as they felt they shaped this work.)

It seems many organizations get performance management the wrong way around. Underperforming staff are often put on a Performance Improvement Plan with a clear set of criteria for success, but regular employees lack this clarity for themselves. You will get better results with clear, tangible goals for your staff, and accountability for how they deliver.

There are various ways to do this: Objective Key Results, Big Rocks, Sprints, and more. Importantly, pick a method that works for you, and define and review a set of SMART goals on a regular cadence (e.g. every six months). Ask each reporting level to define this for their reports and ensure these goals map to broader organizational objectives.

Human beings are notoriously motivated by incentives. Arline mileage programs, coffee rewards, trophies in video games, competitions, and more are examples of this. You will get better performance out of your team if you can design incentives that reward the right kinds of behavior. Continued employment and a salary just aren’t enough.

Incentives come in two great-tasting flavors: intrinsic and extrinsic. The latter focuses on material rewards for work such as cash bonuses, gadgets, and gifts. The former focuses on personal validation of their work such as personal thank-you notes and highlighting great performers in company-wide communication, pictures in offices, dinners with the executive team, and more.

Incentives differ between different teams. Consider what motivates each team and design a mixture of intrinsic and extrinsic incentives and rewards based on what behavior you want to see (e.g. engineering teams properly testing their code). Distribute these incentives regularly (e.g. each month.)

Let’s be honest, everyone hates reporting. Sadly, good reporting is a necessary evil in doing performance management well. The key here is (a) simplicity, (b) ease of distribution, and (c) focusing only on critical delivery and cultural information (and not pages and pages of filler.)

A method that works well here is to ask team members to produce monthly reports, distributed via email that summarize:
 

•    Accomplishments – key accomplishments and wins.
•    Blockers – issues that are slowing down forward progress (useful to highlight for managers to help unblock.)
•    High Fives – which staff went above and beyond (this provides an opportunity for senior management to thank/reward them.)
•    Insights – general insights into patterns, trends, and other useful observations.
•    Next Month – a summary of planned work for the next month.
 

Support
The differentiator between effective and ineffective performance management is how well the company supports the success of their staff. Don’t leave this to chance: be as intentional about this as you are about any other process or workflow.

Great performance is not just about individual delivery but building an environment that supports continuous learning. Again, be intentional in how you do this.

Providing books, training, guest speakers, weekly demo days (where people can show off new skills), and more all provide enormous value. Don’t just provide the education, but encourage and expect people to discuss it, incorporate it in team meetings/workflow, and incentivize those who are active in facilitating education.

People thrive with other people, and internal communities are enormously powerful here. They can produce more meaningful environments, which often have a direct line to better performance due as the cultural norms of “great work” are higher standards.

Form company-wide community discussion platforms (e.g. with Discourse or Slack), run internal meetups, coordinate competitions, and hackathons, and encourage staff to actively facilitate this work. Generate content and opportunities, and present an open, accessible environment in which every team member can shape a better company.

It is essential that you highlight and reward active community members for participating in producing and facilitating this work: this will encourage your team members to mimic their behavior.

Review

Effective performance review is not just about supporting the success of the individual but also building internal capabilities to always evolve how performance management is delivered. For many companies, this happens in a haphazard way. Put in place intentional milestones for reviewing and optimizing how you deliver great performance management.

Review the performance of each team member quarterly. Review their delivery on the stated goals, the monthly reports, and invite honest and frank feedback from the employee about what is and isn’t working. Make adjustments, revise the plan, and evolve. Keep these discussions productive and constructive, not combative.

It is impossible to get performance management perfect right out the gate. As such, put in place an annual review of the overall performance management program.

Send out an employee survey, interview key team members, review progress on goals, receptiveness to incentives, and more. Present this information at a leadership meeting and make recommendations for changes based on this data. Then, present these changes to the broader company so they are in the loop. This is how we evolve and grow in a clear collaborative way.

In Conclusion

One of the fascinating elements of running a business is that cultural and performance management can not just deliver better results, but can also generate a more meaningful, impactful environment for your teams. The companies that deliver this most effectively start simple, learn from their work, and evolve their approach regularly.

This is the crux of these recommendations. Use these ten steps as a starting point but adjust to taste as you gather more information. Importantly, include your employees in this process, not just your managers, and you will get fantastic results. Best of luck!