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McGraw-Hill - Briefcase Books - Performance Management, SAMOKSZTAŁCENIE, Mcgraw-Hill [Briefcase Books]

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The Challenge of
Performance
Management
the accounting, managers and employees are going through
their yearly dance of performance appraisal, as they call it.
Michael manages fourteen employees directly, so he’s
going to be busy meeting with each of them, filling out forms,
and gulping antacid. Since the personnel department is push-
ing him to get his forms in on time, he has to figure out a way
to get this all done as fast as possible.
And he does. He sends an appraisal form to each employ-
ee via interoffice mail. After employees complete the forms,
he meets with each one for about fifteen minutes to discuss
the forms, and then signs them. Voilà! Problem solved. The
paperwork gets done on time, the personnel department is
content, and everyone goes back to their “real work.”
What’s Wrong with This Picture?
The better question might be “Is there anything right with this
1
I
t’s year-end at Acme Progressive. Apart from wrapping up
2
Performance Management
picture?” Let me give you a bit more information about Acme.
Typically the forms that Michael and the other managers
send on to the personnel department are put into file folders
and mostly forgotten. The information on the forms is so
vague and unreliable it can’t be used to make even basic per-
sonnel decisions, let alone decisions about salary and promo-
tions. Michael and his staff won’t look at them again until the
next year-end dance of performance appraisal. If you could
hear Michael’s staff talking privately about the process, you
would hear comments like “What a joke!” or “This is a waste
of time.”
Wait, there’s more. Michael’s department isn’t running very
well. His staff miss deadlines. They aren’t sure who should be
doing what, so some things “fall through the cracks,” while in
other areas they step all over each other getting things done.
The same mistakes are made again and again, which drives
everybody nuts, but nobody seems to know why they keep
happening. Mostly Michael doesn’t know what’s going on. All
he knows is that he is busy and his staff are busy.
Here’s the fundamental problem. Michael, his manager,
colleagues, and pretty much everyone at Acme see what they
call “performance management” as a necessary evil. They do
it because they “ought to” or “have to.” They don’t realize that
performance management, if carried out properly, has the
potential for fixing many of the problems they’re facing.
So, this whole process, with the forms, the superficial
meetings, and filing, is a waste. No, it’s worse than a waste.
Employees think Michael is a poor manager (perhaps they’re
right) and that affects his credibility. The organization thinks
it’s accomplishing something, but it’s just creating more use-
less work for people who have better things to do. They’re just
doing it all wrong. Pure and simple.
Is There Hope?
Yes, there’s hope. Acme has a very skilled and dedicated staff.
The managers are good folks and bright—even if they need to
The Challenge of Performance Management
3
learn about managing per-
formance. If they knew
what performance man-
agement means, what it
can be used for, and how
it can address Acme’s
business problems, the
company could be more
successful—and the work
climate would be better
and more enjoyable for
everyone.
In fact there’s hope for
every company and every manager. Does the Acme story
sound familiar to you? Have you ever done what Michael
does? Have you ever had your performance “appraised” in a
way that didn’t really help you much and maybe even discour-
aged you from want-ing to improve at all? Probably. Are you
getting value from your performance management system? A
little? A lot? Probably less than you could get.
Our goal for this book is to explore the basic question,
“How can you use performance management as a meaningful
tool to help people succeed?” Let’s start by looking at what
performance management is and what it isn’t.
Performance Management: What Is It?
Performance management is an ongoing communication
process, undertaken in partnership, between an employee and
his or her immediate supervisor that involves establishing
clear expectations and understanding about:
• the essential job functions the employee is expected to do
• how the employee’s job contributes to the goals of the
organization
• what “doing the job well” means in concrete terms
• how employee and supervisor will work together to sus-
tain, improve, or build on existing employee performance
Performance
Appraisal Isn’t
Performance
Management
Don’t make the mistake of thinking
that evaluating or appraising perform-
ance is the same thing as managing
performance. It’s not. Evaluating per-
formance is but one part of a per-
formance management system. If you
only evaluate performance and don’t
do the other parts, you’ll fail.
4
Performance Management
• how job performance will be measured
• identifying barriers to performance and removing them
That gives us a starting point and we’ll continue to flesh
out things as we go. Note some important words here.
Managing performance is done with the employee
because it benefits the
employee, the manager,
and the organization, and
is best done in a collabo-
rative, cooperative way.
Performance manage-
ment is a means of pre-
venting poor perform-
ance, and working togeth-
er to improve perform-
ance. Above all, perform-
ance management means
ongoing, two-way com-
munication between the
performance manager (supervisor or manager) and staff
member. It’s about talking and listening. It’s about both people
learning and improving.
What Performance Management Isn’t
It’s important to know what performance management is, but
we also need to know what it is not. In our tale about Acme
Progressive, Michael thought that performance
appraisal
was
the same as performance
management.
Most people at Acme
thought performance management was about filling out and
filing forms. No surprise that the process had no positive value.
To succeed at performance management, you need to be
aware of some common misconceptions that can trip up even
the best of managers.
Performance management isn’t:
• something a manager does to an employee
• a club to force people to work better or harder
Performance manage-
ment
This is an ongoing
communication process,
undertaken in partnership, between
an employee and his or her immedi-
ate supervisor that involves establish-
ing clear expectations and under-
standing about the jobs to be done. It
is a system.That is, it has a number of
parts, all of which need to be included
if the performance management sys-
tem is going to add value to the
organization, managers, and staff.
The Challenge of Performance Management
5
• used only in poor performance situations
• about completing forms once a year
It is an ongoing communication process between two peo-
ple. That’s the key point. If you remember it’s about people
working with people to make everyone better, you have a
much greater chance of succeeding. Everyone wins.
What’s the Payoff for Using Performance
Management?
As you read more about performance management, you will
realize that it takes time and effort—perhaps time and effort
you would rather use for other things. What manager wants
more work? The reality is that it does take time and effort, but
the time and effort are an investment. We need to turn our
attention to how that investment brings a return.
When performance management is used properly, there
are clear benefits to everyone—managers, employees, and the
organization. Let’s take a look at those potential benefits.
For Managers
My favorite question to ask managers is, “What things about
your job drive you nuts, the things that you take home at the
end of the day?” Here are some of their answers:
• feeling the need to micromanage and to be involved in
everything to make sure it goes right
• never having enough time in the day
• employees who are too timid to make decisions they
could make on their own
• employees’ lack of understanding of their jobs, particular-
ly the whys of the jobs
• staff disagreements about who does what and who is
responsible for what
• employees giving too little information to managers when
information is important
• finding out about problems too late to prevent them from
growing
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