Contrarian Thinking: managing performance

Showing posts with label managing performance. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Summer's Top 150: Last Installment

It's the last day of summer already, and there you have it: the 150+ blog posts, articles, presentations, podcasts and videos I've come across over the last 3 months. Here's the final installment:

If there's a single link from this Summer's Top 150 you need to check out, this is the one: a great slide show on company culture, and very relevant to the public service.
Forget excellence - Be outstanding!
Realigning Your Role
Owning Your Career
Behavior never lies
Execute or die
Maybe (New Michael Jordan Commercial) - I just like the implication for employees :-)
The New Employee Retention Crisis: Retaining Low Performers
What are you thinking about
Employee Engagement: You Are Not the Boss of Me.
Multitasking, marijuana, managing?
When weak management pushes top performers out the door
Behaving badly
Facebook Friending Policy
5 Ways HR Can Poise a Firm for Growth?
It takes two baby!

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Summer's Top 150: Supervision & Performance Management

I know, I know. This "dump post" includes way too many articles. But the topic is soooo important!

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Awesome Reading Recommendations

I've been away for the last two weeks, both for work and leisure. When I returned I had over 300 articles waiting for me in my RSS reader. I managed to process them all, and here are my top recommendations, arranged by themes:

On Staffing:

On Thinking:

On Collaboration:

On creativity and innovation:

On Leadership:

Miscellaneous:

And my favourite quote of the week:

"If you perform at your personal best, doing everything possible to make a success of the immediate situation, then doing it as a ‘leader’ or a ‘follower’ has no meaning." (Miki Saxon)

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

A Big One!

Many good articles to recommend this week:

Sunday, May 03, 2009

This Week's Recommendations

And some humor:

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The Case for Managing Employee Performance

One of the recurring themes in my presentations (“Bottom-Up Renewal”, “Living Renewal”) as well as in my writings (“An Inconvenient Renewal”, this blog) has been performance management, more specifically: managing the performance of employees.

Today I made a presentation to my department’s PS Renewal Committee on this topic. I have uploaded the PowerPoint on GCPEDIA. For those of you who don’t have access to GCPEDIA, here’s the gist of it:

Firstly, it is important to distinguish between performance management as in “organization performance” vs. “employee performance”. The two concepts are interrelated, but have very different implications for supervisors.

Secondly, despite all the criticism against bureaucracy, the “public service of Canada employee performance management framework” (i.e. legislation, TBS policies and guidelines, collective agreements, etc.) is simple and straightforward. One of the most compelling quotes I came across actually comes from this overview of the Financial Administration Act:

“Performance management is a key enabler of effective human resources management and the achievement of organizational effectiveness and results. Effective performance management fosters integration of employee performance with organizational goals and results; engagement, responsibility and accountability for on-the-job performance and organizational results; and, fairness, consistency and transparency in the treatment, recognition and promotion of people. Integral to performance management are leadership, communication, coaching, mentoring, learning, development and recognition. Performance management results in a work culture in which excellence in performance is encouraged and recognized, and unsatisfactory performance effectively managed.”

Many tools and resources are available to supervisors to manage employee performance and hone their skills. Nevertheless, employee performance management is not valued and practiced as much as other management activities (i.e. financial management). There is currently a strong push for employee performance management in the public service. However for some reason people management in general is still not something that is commonly measured.

But if:

the management of employee performance and organizational performance are interdependent...
the management of employee performance is the responsibility of every supervisors...
the prescriptions and instruments for the management of employee performance are built into legislation, collective agreements, TBS guidelines, policies and directives, and departmental policies...
and the tools and resources for the management of employee performance are widely available to all public servants...

...Why is the management of employee performance a major weakness throughout most of the public service?

Is it because:

Organizational performance is possible without employees?
Employee performance management is less important than organizational performance management?
We tolerate poor employee performance management where we would never allow poor financial management?
Employee performance management is just optional?

Managing employee performance management is simple. The hard part is actually doing it, because most: s

Most supervisors are not appointed in their role based on their ability to manage employee performance;
Supervisors must manage employee performance every single day (as opposed to once a year);
Supervisors must be willing to have difficult conversations with employees;
Supervisors must practice truth-telling;
Supervisors must make unpopular decisions;
Supervisors must face their greatest fears.

With this in mind, the rest of my presentation focuses on the steps my organization has taken to make the management of employee performance a priority and “raise the bar”.

As potential solutions, I also offer the following:

Give employee performance management as much importance as we give to organizational performance management.
Be as diligent and rigorous with people management as we are with financial management (both of which, ironically, derive their authorities from the FAA).
Increase focus on day-to-day management of employee performance (not just on the annual performance appraisals).
Appoint people in supervisory roles based on their people management skills, their ability to manage employee performance, and their willingness to have difficult conversations with employees.
If supervisors are able to do the single most difficult aspect of their job well (i.e. managing performance of employees), the rest should follow naturally.

I'm considering turning this presentation into a "talk"... Does it make sense? Is the PS ready for this?

Your feedback is always appreciated.

Thanks!

Monday, April 20, 2009

Last Week's Best

I came across lots of interesting blog posts and links in the past week:

"My company previously used performance reviews that looked at “soft” skills only. We found through analysis that we could basically determine what an employee’s score would be by knowing who their supervisor was. The score was a reflection of the supervisor, not the employee."

You may also check out the original study. Here's the gist of it:

"In this article, we argue that the beneficial effects of goal setting have been overstated and that systematic harm caused by goal setting has been largely ignored. We identify specific side effects associated with goal setting, including a narrow focus that neglects non-goal areas, a rise in unethical behavior, distorted risk preferences, corrosion of organizational culture, and reduced intrinsic motivation."

I am waiting impatiently for the released of the 2008 Public Service Employee Survey results. More than four months have elapsed since the survey was administered and it appears it will take another month to get the results. Hum... If you want to know how I feel about this, check out this video.

Please vote for your three favourite pos ts on ContrarianThinking.ca if you haven't already done so! The poll is in the side-bar, at the top.

Sunday, April 12, 2009

A Bit of Everything

Here's a list of the best blog posts, articles, videos and other resources I came across this week. There's some really good stuff in there, so take the time to go over each of them:

Also, my friend Asif has put together a video in which he explains a phenomenon bloggers like me are all too familiar with - lurking - and offers some interesting insight.