Performance Management: Linking Strategy with Results — Part 1

Few subjects are more widely discussed and more misunderstood than performance management.  Today, with the demand for qualified people higher than ever before, the impact of performance management has never been greater. Yet, so many organizations have all but given up on this critical process. Perhaps they grew tired of doing it so poorly for so long. But throwing in the towel on the process of performance management is a surefire path to confusion, complexity, dissipated resources and fragmented, disjointed efforts. There’s a better way.

In this series, we’ll take look at a step-by-step approach to performance management we’ve developed that changes the dynamic of organizational and individual performance.

John O. Whitney, former business professor at Columbia University and author of The Economics of Trust, served as a turnaround consultant for many years. In his experience, he insisted that he could go into any organization and eliminate up to 50% of the activities being performed by employees with little or no impact on the overall performance of the enterprise (at least, the customers would never notice).

While you may wonder about this, ask yourself these questions: Are our employees working in the same direction, creating unique value for the customer? Do they understand the purpose, mission, vision and values of our organization? Do they know and appreciate how their actions and activities, day in and day out, contribute to the success of the enterprise?  Put it this way: If they did, what would your organization accomplish?

Linking organizational and individual performance is not a new idea. While few will argue against it, so much has been written and presented on the subject that a simple idea has become a complex, cumbersome and widely disliked exercise. Our aim is to develop a simple, effective method to link the two in way that will accelerate job satisfaction and organizational results.

Reflect the Strategy

To begin with, we view organizational performance around four key questions:

1. What do we want to accomplish? (Goals/Targets)
2. Why is it important? (Mission)
3. How do we want to go about it? (Values)
4. What will happen if we are successful? What will it mean to our stakeholders; employees, customers, ownership, vendors and the community? (Vision)

Keeping track of organizational performance in way that is simple, concise and easy to share with stakeholders comes next. More on that next time.

For more information on ways to get your team members aligned and performing at a high level, contact me at joe@ajstrategy.com.

The preceding content was provided by a contributor unaffiliated with Printing Impressions. The views expressed within may not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of Printing Impressions. Artificial Intelligence may have been used in part to create or edit this content.