The art of Performance

What do you think about Performance Management?

I was asked this question recently, at the event joining GMSHRM (the Greater Miami SHRM association) and HRABC (the Broward SHRM association) in Dania Beach, end of August if I well recall. The guy is a practice SVP of very important consulting firm in South Florida, a well-respected organization which leads the local marketplace.

First and foremost I replied “It is mainly a process, not a single moment throughout the year or at every quarter. It is about setting SMART goals, observing behaviors in multiple and diverse business situations, assessing performance and eventually competencies, communicating and giving feedback, coaching and mentoring, and of course many other things because actually for me, Performance Management is really everything.”

The guy looked at me and smiled like he was thinking “ok, we are on the same page”. Then I added “I do not care about the scorecard, I have developed many but still believe that it could easily be a white paper sheet.” End of the smile. The guy started looking at me as I was from another planet.

What did I say wrong? Maybe he does not like paper? Empty sheets remind him of early days at school when bullied by a big bad mate?

It took me a while to understand, but then I got it. Only few months before I was an employee, VP of HR with a long and strong OD background and experience. Now I am a consultant talking with another consultant. And this, believe me, changes perspectives dramatically.

Consultants (I am one of them now so please do not get me wrong) would love to customize any single piece of their services to better fit the client’s needs, but for many reasons (lack of time, efforts, established procedures, and sometimes fear to fail or to be misunderstood or not understood at all) off-the-shelves solutions are their preference. Easier to market, easier to explain, easier to apply, and often satisfactory as well as fully customized services.

Well, a white sheet can hardly be sold as an off-the-shelf solution. Really. So, probably he turned his expression not because I replied in a bad way, but because I replied in a non-consulting way.

When I was an employee, VP of OD and Reward, I always thought that the appraisal form was the death of Performance Management. This, because when you launch a new PM system, straight away the form becomes the PM system. WRONG! The form is a little and useful tool of the entire PM system, which also encompasses meetings, communications, behaviors to observe, many other things to say or do, and first of all culture, a Performance Management Culture.

I am still there, by the way. Performance Management is just culture. The way you apply it, the timeframe, whether linked to reward or not, how the scorecard looks like, if it is a 90’, 180’ or 360’ degrees, who is involved in the process, how many steps, how many half-time reviews, if it encompasses also competencies / qualitative goals… all these things have just to be other representations of the company culture, which is expressed through the PM system. PM is culture, and everything else.

But of course it is easier to explain how to fill in an evaluation form rather than explain what the PM culture is. And it is easier to sell, too. Which is ok for consultants, because if it does not work (that is, the company does not turn the wonderful performance of its employees into money) the consultant is allowed to say that it was due to the client which was unable to apply the system in the correct manner. But it is sad for an internal OD guy when she/he does not get the sense of what PM is, and is just keen on applying the form to all the target population within a given time. Hurry up!

Someone could argue that off-the-shelf solutions often fail because they are not able to actually catch and match the client’s needs, but I leave this further discussion with you.

What I want to underpin here is that I would love, I would cherish any PM system which could really be both customizable (in terms of being fully capable of detecting client’s needs) and somehow relying on an established structured and process-driven solution. All off-the-shelf systems pretend to be like that, but when I was sitting on the other side of the table, I have hardly seen something similar.

Ready to be contradicted, you are all mostly welcome.

 

Your friendly OD guy,

Federico

 

PS: it is extremely probable that the SVP of the consulting firm never got bullied by anyone, the guy is pretty big and tall and if I had been one of his schoolmate, I would have never challenged or annoyed him, never!

PPS: big, tall, cute, smart, nice, fit, successful. Whatta hell?!?

PPPS: I recently met a PM system which really tastes as being like something I would cherish… let’s speak soon!