InetSoft Seminar: Performance Management Best Practices

This is 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.

Today we're talking about performance management best practices. Organizations tend to follow similar patterns when it comes to performance management. They implement a performance management program, and it becomes structured into people’s daily routines. Then after some time people tend to get complacent and stop using those performance management tools.

So the question before us today is how do we move beyond that? How do we keep using these business management tools? There are lots of different things that I could share with you today, but I thought the best way to start will be to share with you are what I call the six fatal mistakes in performance management. I think this is a very important conversation because if you are going to build a sustainable model of performance management, it is very best, in my opinion, that you know where you’re failing. You need to be able to identify where the traps are, and if you see yourself falling into one of these traps, you can avoid it.

So that's what I'm going to talk to you about today. Are there any bowlers here today? Does any body bowl? I used to be a competitive bowler. Do you believe that? I love bowling. But if you go to bowling alleys, you know what bowling alleys are made of? They are made of wood. So if you go to bowling lanes where they are not up keeping the lanes, where they’re not regularly maintaining them, regularly polishing them, regularly providing essential care and maintenance of them, do you know what happens to those lanes?

Because people keep throwing their balls on them, they get ruts, they get ruts and in times those ruts turn into grooves, and folks, it doesn’t matter once the lanes had gotten rutted how good of a bowler you are, if you throw your ball on its rut, guess what? It stays in the rut, and it goes wherever that rut takes it. Why am I telling you this?

Is performance management new? Is this concept new? No, folks. It has been around for a long, long time, hasn't it? We’ve just changed the name. Back in the 60s it was planning program budgeting. What was it in the 70s? Managing by objectives. In the 80s, I know you all remember this one, total quality management, TQM.

Folks, all we've done is changed the name, right. The idea of data driven decision making is not new. So this concept has been around for a long time, and I think just like bowling alleys, if we don’t constantly care and maintain them, this thing that we’re calling performance management, a performance initiative, gets ruts. And what happens when you get ruts? It doesn’t matter how good you are, if you hit them, the balls going to follow them. So what I want to talk to you about today is what I call the six fatal mistakes, the six ruts that we get into. Here’s a good quote I came across: “When you start with an honest and diligent effort to determine the truth of a situation, the right decision often become self-evident.” And even if the right decision doesn’t become self-evident, you absolutely cannot make a serious good decision without first confronting the brutal facts.

Okay. Why am I telling you this? Every organization, everyone, hits this crossroads where the rules have changed. Something is fundamentally changing. It could be customer expectations. It could be the economy. It could be technology. Something has changed the rules. The organization has survived, and in fact, thrives on this change. Once you say hang on a minute, how does this affect us in our reality?

What are the brutal facts that we've got to face in order to survive and thrive on this change? Why am I telling you this? I think your organization may be at a crossroads, the pace, the rate, the scale of change in today’s work life is at an unprecedented level. That’s not my opinion. That’s well documented. Do you agree with that? It is, folks. We are at crossroads whether your in government or industry, you’re at a crossroads. I think what will define us a successful organization is what we do with this crossroad, whether or not we face these brutal facts and ask ourselves, what do we have to change?