informal coalitions

Paying for performance at the Olympics?

I was dismayed to read in yesterday’s Sunday Times that the British Olympic Association (BOA) is drawing up plans to pay bonuses to athletes who win medals at the 2012 Olympic Games in London (Team GB to be rewarded with gold for gold).

This is not to say that our athletes don’t deserve recognition for their sporting achievements and a generous reward for their efforts. Far from it. But advocating a crude form of performance-related pay as part of the strategy for securing more medals seems to me to miss the point on several levels:

High-expectations leadership – moving from vicious to virtuous circles

Some years ago, when I was a manager in a large industrial plant, we took the decision to scrap a whole raft of ‘performance measures’ and related practices that had been introduced some years earlier under the guise of productivity improvement and management control. Despite widely-held concerns that poor work practices would increase if controls were relaxed, we pushed on with the decision.

The reasoning was simple. If we were ever to unlock the vast wealth of untapped talent in the business, we needed to change the expectations that managers - throughout the organization - had of their staff.

Who needs job descriptions?

A few years back, I was a member of a group that was looking to design the managerial roles, management systems and work processes for a new organization. We were being helped by one of the then Big Five consultancy firms. As part of this, the consultants produced a set of draft job descriptions, which included one for the role that I would be filling.

I saw the descriptions as bland, matter-of-fact and limiting.

But, when I argued that I was not excited by them, my comments were dismissed by the in-house sponsor: "Job descriptions are not meant to excite," he insisted, "Provided they set out the main activities of the role and identify what’s in and what’s not, that’s good enough for me." My continued protests fell on deaf ears. Or so I thought.

During a break, the Director chairing the meeting confided that he’d agreed with what I’d said. Of course, he couldn’t say so in the meeting itself - money had been spent on getting the experts’ advice and the ‘defender in chief’ was his right-hand man – but he asked me to send him an outline of my thoughts. And so, the Contribution Statement was born.

Calling weaknesses "development needs" is not a sign of strength

Why is it that ...?

Many HR, L&D and OD professionals insist on referring to individuals' weaknesses as "development needs."  Perhaps this euphemism is meant to make people feel better and less threatened.  Perhaps it is an attempt to avoid giving people what is misguidedly seen as 'bad news'. 

Drucker on controls and control

In Is a Balanced Scorecard Bad?, Jonathan Becher argues "... metrics by themselves are unlikely to increase the performance of an organization... metrics must be accompanied by objectives and initiatives."  This echoes Peter Drucker's often repeated view that:

• controls are different from control; and, most importantly, that
• more controls do not necessarily lead to more control.

Becher makes the equally important point that use of the term "scorecard" inevitably places undue emphasis on measures (ie 'scores' and scorekeeping).  As I've suggested elsewhere, organizational scorekeepers and commentators are too often seen as more important than the players!

The peaks and valleys of strengths and weaknesses

In the post Are Your Strengths Under Your Control? (31 January, 2007) "Ed" makes some important points about how an individual's strengths can become weaknesses if these are carried to excess. He suggests, for example, that self-confidence (a strength) can become arrogance (a weakness) if taken to an extreme. This is an important - and often overlooked - dynamic in individual and organizational performance. 

Building commitment -v- rewarding performance

Many organizations retain an almost messianic belief in the power of performance-related pay and bonus targets to generate commitment and deliver high-quality performance. This is most evident in the approach to executive pay, which is rarely out of the headlines. But the same thinking often penetrates much more deeply into organizations - whether translated into formal pay systems or simply governing the organization's general approach to managing performance. Unfortunately, commitment can't be gained simply by setting up a process of formal target setting or arranging periodic 'performance review' meetings. People might comply - for a time and in a fashion - with externally imposed routines and targets. But commitment is an inner drive. It arises naturally where people feel that they have the motive, means and opportunity to excel at what they are doing.

The seductive power of ‘the one best way’

Towards the end of my time as an in-house OD Manager, I attended a series of half-day, inter-company workshops which had been organized by a leading HR-based networking and research organization.  These were designed to address a number of pressing HR issues of the time, including (so far as I recall) performance management, succession and development, manpower planning, competency frameworks and so on.  Each workshop was attended by senior managers from a range of member organizations.

Misdirection through ill-thought-out incentives

In The Most Perverse Incentive of All, Earl Mardle tells the story of a Norwegian oil company in which management's obsession with KPIs eventually came back to bite it.  The organization’s budgeting ‘system’ was based on the widely held management assumption that "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it." This simplistic approach to performance management and executive reward had resulted in attention being misdirected towards short-term costs at the expense of more important oil exploration opportunities. 

Managing performance through informal conversations

Performance management is usually thought of almost exclusively in terms of formal, structured processes through which managers are expected to control the performance of their staff. These include formal target setting procedures; routine progress checking and performance monitoring; programmed feedback sessions; and end-of-year reviews. Often these elements are driven more by the requirements of an organization’s pay structures and the felt need for managers to get to grips with ‘poor performers’, than by the wider considerations of business performance and staff engagement.

While leaders are focusing their attention on getting these formal systems and processes ‘right’, though, they need to recognize that other, more powerful forces are at play which unavoidably impact upon organizational performance. The everyday conversations and interactions that they have with their staff – and that staff have with each other - are particularly influential in this.