Happy New Year!

This is the time of year when traditionally, many of us renew or make new personal goals.  In addition, depending upon your planning schedule at work, it may be time to re-evaluate individual or departmental goals and adjust them if necessary.  A quick read for this time of year is the book "How to Manage Performance - 24 Lessons for Improving Performance," by Robert Bacal (published by McGraw-Hill). This book is such a quick read that, in fact, it can easily be finished while on the treadmill at the gym during your next lunch hour. 

We all know that an ongoing dialogue is essential to effectively improve and evaluate performance.  This book provides actionable suggestions to be put in place to make sure performance management is indeed a collaborative, ongoing process.  In order to achieve this, Robert Bacal makes three suggestions in the opening of his book - to invest time and effort in the performance management process, share responsibility for the process between employee and manager and to seek out employee wisdom. He then goes on to address all critical elements of the performance management process.   It is well worth spending an hour to read this book.