Vicki Anderson

Many people say that if you do the right behaviors you will get the right results. This may or may not be true, but how do you know what the right behaviors are? For that matter, how do you know what the right results are?

When you set goals you are looking for specific results, but there are often many ways to achieve those results. By focusing only on one set of behaviors, you may be limiting yourself in achieving the results. On the other hand, there will be behaviors that will keep you from achieving the results.

To achieve your goals I believe it is a combination of the what and the how. The what is the result you are trying to achieve and the how is the behavior that will get the right result. You can not do wrong behaviors and expect right results. You can, however, have multiple behaviors that might be acceptable.

When setting goals, I think it is important to talk about the hows as well as the whats. It’s about setting parameters for the hows, not about proscribing them. Provide examples of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. Then offer freedom to create within those parameters to achieve the results.

Great performance comes from having a goal and knowing what it will take to achieve it; then get feedback along the way as to whether you are on the right path or not. As a leader, it is your job to provide this.

How do I get people to do what I want? This is a universal question from supervisors. My answer is simple:

1) Ask for the outcomes you want.
2) Define clearly what the outcome looks like and why it is important
3) When you see people doing what you want, reinforce it. If they are not doing what you want, correct it immediately.

While this sounds so common sense, it is amazing how many people work with very general instructions from their supervisors. Most people know how to do a job if they have been trained properly, but they rarely know why they do it or what the expected outcome is. Alternatively, many people are told the outcome, but not the process of how to get there.

Being a supervisor today means responsibility for more people than you can truly take care of. I find it typical for people to supervise 30+ people. Under these circumstances, it is even more important that each communication be useful to both parties. That means knowing which information the person needs—process or outcome, or both.

Communicating your expectations clearly takes more time at the beginning, but it saves more time along the way and achieves more positive results. When assigning a job to an employee, use your time efficiently by clearly stating the outcome you desire. The more complex the task, the more important this becomes. However, even simple tasks are often assigned with vague instructions such as, “Get me a copy of the XYZ report when you have time.” The employee doesn’t know whether that means drop everything and do it now, do it by the end of the day, or do it in the next couple days. People generally want to please their supervisors. Give them information to do that.

If you want to achieve consistent results from employees, you must be consistent in your reinforcement. This is the element that takes more time, but has such a big payoff.

When you see people taking actions you want, tell them so. This doesn’t have to be a flowery speech. It can be a simple, “You’re on the right track,” or “Thanks for getting on that project so quickly,” or “Looks like you’ve made that correction we talked about yesterday.” You can also leave a post-it note or send an email.

When people go off-track, get them back on the right path quickly by clarifying your instructions and the outcomes you stated earlier. Make sure they have the resources to get the job done—that means people, knowledge, and tools. Let them know the impact their error has on the product or process so they know why you are correcting them. Give them useful information that will help them succeed, such as “When you don’t get that part sanded smooth enough the first time, it means the next person has to stop and fix it before they can do their part of the process. This causes delays and extra work for others. Please make sure you sand the parts smoothly enough that the next person can fit their part on easily.”

Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz who had the power all along to go home if she chose, supervisors do not realize the power they hold in achieving the results they want. The majority of employees want to succeed, but they don’t know what the supervisor is looking for, so they try different things to get attention—sometimes the wrong things. You get consistently right behavior when you ask for what you want, define the details as necessary, and reinforce it when you see it.

A concern I have in today’s economy is that we may put a lot of round pegs into square holes simply to get by or for longer. We all know that finding the right job fit is important to long-term job satisfaction as well as successful performance for the organization. However, since so many people are out of work many will be forced to take anything they can get just to survive. While this will work in the short term, it is sometimes difficult for people to know when to move on as the job market picks up again. It may encourage people to become employed or stay in jobs that are simply not suited for them. Even more difficult are the situations where people’s jobs have been eliminated and probably won’t ever come back. These people may need new training for new careers. I hope that there will be sufficient counseling to help people find the right path and I encourage employers to get involved, if they aren’t already, so they can help groom the right people they will need for their futures.

There is a lot of talk today about performance management, but confusion about what it is. To me, performance management is about helping people understand what they are expected to do in their jobs and giving them clear and frequent feedback about how they are doing it.  This means that a once a year performance appraisal is not performance management.

So often an employee tells me his supervisor never talks to him about how he is doing unless he messes up. Employees need to know what they are doing right so they can keep doing it and they need to know what they are doing wrong so they can change it. This requires frequent feedback.

Talent management is about developing people’s skills, abilities, and knowledge so they can contribute effectively to your organization. This is not just about putting down a learning goal on a performance appraisal for the next year and sending someone to a seminar. This is about coaching and counseling, giving job assignments for learning and growth, and encouraging people to learn on their own.

Having a good performance management system can be used as a talent management tool if it is used to provide frequent feedback for the employee to know what he or she is doing well or should develop.  Goals can be set for honing skills or for learning new skills to prepare them for future positions.

Even though there are many people looking for jobs today, the time will come again soon when we have a talent shortage, so this is an excellent time to be making the most of the people assets you have by developing a consistent and frequent means of monitoring and measuring performance successes. This will also help you manage the talent you have now into the talent you will need in the future. Execution of your strategy requires that you be intentional about great performance.

One product I have found to be good for this is KeyneLink. It is web-based and very user friendly.  It is designed to facilitate frequent performance-related conversations, which clearly meets my criteria for performance management. It is a way to manage talent by measuring performance. More information can be found on their website.

It’s the start of a new year and most of us have new goals at work. In this time of economic insecurity the best thing we can do to protect jobs is to make sure we are working toward achieving the organizational strategic objectives. As leaders we have an obligation to inform and coach our employees so that they know what is expected of them to perform successfully. Therefore, it is very important that you communicate the strategic objectives of your organization and tie all the goals possible to achieving those objectives.

I just returned from a meeting on performance management with a group of consultants who are in the performance improvement business. Wayne Nelsen, of Keyne Insight, coined the term “strexecution” to describe the point at which performance management goes from planning to execution. So often this part is missing. Great strategic plans are made, but then the everyday workings of an organization go along without any alignment to those plans. Keyne Insight  has developed an online product called KeyneLink that directly ties goals to strategic objectives and facilitates communication between manager and direct reports so that regular feedback ensures accomplishment.

I have found so often that people think performance management is synonymous with performance appraisal, but this is far from the truth. Performance management is the act of setting expectations for performance, giving regular feedback to remove obstacles and provide resources, and review outcomes of performance. This must happen more than once per year to be effective.  Good performance management is 4-6 times per year. The communication is far more important to successful performance than any form.

I am passionate about the importance of good performance management. Contact me if you want more information on making your performance management better.