Performance Management (PM) concerns the broad, end-to-end process by which an organisation can align the accountabilities and tasks everyone undertakes towards achieving their organisation’s strategic goals and objectives. It is the means by which the organisation can fulfil its purpose and make its vision become reality.
In this sense, PM cannot and must not be regarded as a HR system or process (or HR’s responsibility), or for that matter, an annual conversation which occurs between manager and subordinate. Rather, PM is viewed as the ‘heart and lungs’ of an overall leadership culture. Creating and managing an effective approach to PM provides one of the principal pillars on which a high-performance Climate can be established and sustained.
It is crucial that everyone possesses crystal clear clarity about what their organisation is trying to achieve and how their role contributes to this intent. This necessitates that ‘what’ they are there to do and ‘how’ they should behave needs to be explicitly defined. This does not mean writing ‘chapter and verse’. If it takes more than two pages, something is wrong – even for the CEO!
Against this definition, it then becomes possible to conduct a process by which performance can be evaluated, feedback given and coaching provided. People know what is expected; people understand how they are doing and how they are regarded; people build a sense of their underlying potential. Crucially, it provides a link between achievement and reward. It creates an organisational meritocracy embracing financial, customer, employee and environmental stewardship.
We have had extensive experience in helping organisations to embed such effective approaches to PM. As indicated above, the critical issue is to integrate the core behaviours (the ‘how’) to the tasks (the ‘what’) that people need to accomplish to achieve the objectives of their role.
Practising effective PM lies at the core of every leader’s responsibility. We know people prefer to be associated with successful organisations. Adopting GIL’s approach to effective PM makes this entirely feasible because it provides one of the primary mechanisms by which leaders create a high-performance Climate.
