Last Level of Effective Performance Management

This is the continuation of the transcript of an in-person customer seminar hosted by InetSoft on the topic of "Performance Management Best Practices." The speaker is Christopher Wren, Principal Consultant at TFI Consulting.

If there’s no risk or controversy in your life, I am submitting to you, you’re not working on anything of consequence. When you get these measures in place, and I wish had more time to share some more stories with you. When you see failure, well, that’s the moment of truth.

You all ever heard the saying, great people are defined by their times? Winston Churchill was a great man defined by his time. That’s wrong. It’s wrong. It was not the times that defined him.

What defined him was how he chose to respond to the times where he found himself. You see the difference I guarantee you if you get the right measures in place, if you are using it honestly, if you train your managers how to use those measures, you are going to find areas where you were failing.

It’s the moment of truth. What will you do? Well, what defines you as an organization is not the fact the failure occurred. What will define you is what you choose to do about it, and folks, if there is any reason why we have a hard time getting to that fifth level of actualization of performance management, it is this.

We fear failure. We fear failure.

Learn From Failures

Now very quickly showing your hands, how many people in this room have failed? Right, I got it. Did you like it? No, we’ve all failed. Here is an important question. If we have all failed, if it’s such a fundamental part of the human condition, why do we fear it so much? It’s not a good feeling. What else? All right, perceived consequences.

Here’s the deal, folks. If you study, and I have studied extremely successful people in organizations, guess what you see as walk behind them? Lots of failures. What separates them from the crowd is what they do about it. Failure is not a bad thing. It is a good thing if we learn and grow from the experience. Now I want you to think about that.

I want you to take that message back to your workforce. This is very important for this thing that we call performance management. So let me send you out with a call to action, then I'll break. The four things I want you to think about in terms of building a sustainable model of performance management in your organization, when you see silo thinking and silo behavior in your organization I want you to challenge it.

I want you to push back. Keep it tactful. Keep it respectful, but do it doggedly. Challenge it. Now if you do that will you be comfortable or uncomfortable? Very uncomfortable, right? But as I set down here, if there is no risk or controversy in your life, it’s likely you were not working on anything of consequence. Think about it.

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Simplify Wherever Possible

The second thing I want you to do is simplify wherever possible. Simplify how much you are measuring. Simplify how you are measuring. Simplify the questions you are asking of your measures. Simplify the number of initiatives you are trying to improve performance on, and watch what happens. I am convinced that we invite complexity into our lives, and then we complain about how complicated our lives have become, right?

Have you ever seen that? Simplify wherever possible, watch what happens with your organization’s ability to perform. Okay, number three: train your managers on how to work the measures because the measure will not work for you unless you are working the measure. This is diagnostics. Don’t set them up for failure by pushing these measures on them, and say start measuring.

Train them on how to use them. And if the entire organization is using the same process and approach or they have some questions of the data, watch what happens. Start to achieve this thing called synergy. And fourth most importantly, folks, I want you to dare to do what you think is right and not what you think is safe.

Dare to do what you think is right, and not what you think is safe because here’s what I discovered in organizational life. We’re afraid to take risk. In fact, I give keynote speeches on risk and team work. I do about one a month because they are exhausting. You get up on the stage in front of thousands of people, lights in your eyes, and here is how I started I get up there with the microphone.

I just kind of stare at the crowd I let that become a pregnant pause, and then I say this, with a show of hands who in this room would like to arrive safely at their death. There is no right or wrong answer, but it does force you to think about how you are living your life. Think about this, folks, because if we are really going to really take it to the next step, get to that fifth level of development in performance management, we have got to be willing to take risks. Dare to do we think is right. In my book, and I encourage you to look at it. The last chapter has a saying.

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Risk a lot to gain a lot. Risk a little, gain a little. Risk nothing to gain nothing. You decide what you, your organization, your peers, your family stands to gain, and if the gain is a lot, folks, do it. Take the risk. This is how you are going to get to that fifth level of development. When you see failure, name it and claim it, but be prepared to explain it. Learn from it. This is how you get to that last level of effective performance management.