Managing PerformanceAchieving Outstanding PerformanceThrough a “Culture of Dialogue”If managers think giving annual performance reviews is like delivering a newspaper to a house with a growling dog, you have a rewards should not be like spreading peanut aligns performance with
Managing PerformanceAchieving Outstanding PerformanceThrough a “Culture of Dialogue”Creating a “culture of dialogue”2Three keys to managing performance2Achieve Radical Clarity Around Goals4Without clarity, employees lack confidence in management5Why clarity matters5Narrowing priorities6Getting buy-in at the top6Establish Systems and ProcessesTo Create Clarity8What GDDS did8It’s about behavior change10Creative ways to build a culture of dialogue11“Hands-off” management means not being “on-message”12Making Rewards Count13Aligning rewards with goals13Differentiating rewards14Find new ways to differentiate merit pay16Conclusion17This working paper is the product of research conducted by Katie Lemaireand Larry © 2002 Hay Group, rights reserved.
Peter is Chief Executive Officer for a medical supply compa-ny had just crafted a new plan to counter competitive stressed theneed to cut cycle time,concentrate sales on higher-margin products and devel-op new in all,this was a pretty classic,very sound months after circulating the plan,Peter did a “walkaround”to see howthings were was Peter turned,people,depart-Poor performance managementments — whole business units — simply didn’t “get it.”means that the leaders of theFirst surprise: group had cut product design time 30%,meet-company did not recognize theing its goal to increase Peter asked how manu-facturing would be turned out the new design would take muchimportance of gaining clarity ofmore time to cycle time actually message is notgoals, discussing ways togetting through,Peter those goals, andSecond surprise: new strategy called for a shift — emphasize high-following through to make suremargin sales rather that pushing product down the pipeline as fast as were aligned But just about every salesperson Peter spoke to was making transactional saleswith desired high-volume customers;hardly anyone was building relationships with themost profitable is doing just what it’s always done, surprise:Even his top team,the people who had helped him craft thestrategy,was not sticking to asked a team member:“Why are youspending all your time making sure the new machinery is working instead ofdeveloping new markets?”“Because my unit’s chief goal was to improve on-time delivery,”he answered.“But what about companygoals?”said Peter.“We came up with a good planand communicated it very nowhere is it being carried reason is poor performance what does that really mean? It means that the leaders of the company —from the CEO to the executive team to middle managers to shop-floor supervi-sors — did not recognize the importance of gaining clarity of goals,discussingways to accomplish those goals,and following through to make sure behaviorswere aligned with desired
Leaders at many organizations make this assume that becausethey understand the objective,everyone else will, doesn’t work don’t get someone hitting a tennis the brain says “hit the ball,”itdoesn’t automatically message travels through nerve pathwaysdown the arm and crosses gaps between the nerve gaps,orLeaders at many organizations“synapses,”are potential breaks in the neurotransmitters don’tcarry the message across the gap,the message never gets through,or it getsassume that because the objective,everyone else will, too. ItCreating a “culture of dialogue”doesn’t work that like a nervous system,organizations also have gaps that block and gaps can be hierarchical,between boss and be functional,between departments,for they exist betweentwo peers who sit right next to one these gaps sounds sim-ple,but it’s reason is that the “neurotransmitters”in organizations arehuman beings — primarily executive team members,senior managers,middlemanagers and supervisors — whose job it is to make sure that people do theright what it takes to achieve alignment is very iswhat management guru Ram Charan calls the “heavy lifting”of management,and it’s the key to effective performance we’ll see later,there is an important difference between companies that suc-cessfully align behavior with goals and those that do that exe-cute effectively create a “culture of dialogue.”A culture of dialogue encouragespervasive two-way communications where individuals and groups 1) question,challenge,interpret and ultimately clarify goals;and 2) engage in regular per-formance dialogue to monitor behavior and ensure it is aligned with keys to managing performance A culture of dialogue doesn’t happen instantly,any more than a fluid tennisstroke takes practice,persistence and hard three keys tomanaging performance effectively are:2WORKINGPAPER
radical clarity around organizations think they send clear signals but don’ some cases,managers subordinate broad strategic goals to operational goals within their ’s what hap-pened with Peter’s top ,leaders often have too many “top”priorities — we’ve seen as many as 100 in one case — which results in mixed signals and blurred enable effective performance man-agement,it’s important to winnow priorities down to a manageable num-ber as little as is true for the organization as a whole,for each department,for each team and for each goals are clear, systems and processes to ensure clarity. Once goals are organizations must createclear,organizations must create processes to ensure that people get the processes to ensure that right processes include:budget and planning sessions;staff and team meetings to discuss goals;performance management meet-people get the right ;and talent review drives all these represents a “transmitter opportunity,”where managers reiterate goals and monitor behavior to ensure it’s aligned with and differentiating must make sure rewards encourage behaviors consistent with goals,which sounds easy but isn’ is about making sure that stars get significantly more than poor almost everywhere managers distribute rewards more or less of effective performance dialogue is a key con-tributor to dysfunctional reward list these three items separately but they are,of course, and processes depend on clarity from the top of an organization orthe head of a and alignment of rewards depend onmanagers using performance systems is the glue thatholds it all not just any dialogue will must be dialoguewith purpose,focused on to company valuation Companies that manage performance well — General Electric comes to mind— have higher market ? Because,more and more,institutionalinvestors view management’s ability to execute as a vital factor influencing3stock
Just a few years ago institutional investors relied almost exclusively on financialmeasures for company 35 percent of a market valuation isinfluenced by nonfinancial,intangible factors,according to a study by Ernst & study showed that “execution of corporate strategy”and “manage-ment credibility”ranked number one and number two in importance to institu-tional investors out of 22 nonfinancial Inch,a managing direc-tor and analyst at Bear Stearns,notes that in some sectors,such as diversifiedindustrial companies,intangibles account for even more — up to half a compa-ny’s value.“You can take even a mundane asset and inject good managementand have something pretty strong,”says 1: Organizational Climate and TeamsMeasures organizational climateTypical vs. Outstanding Teams Gap Between Actual and Desired Performancedimensions for outstanding topteams vs. typical ones. For each100%dimension of climate we asked80%how the team was performing inreality and how it should be58%60%performing. Then we measuredthe difference or “gap” in their40%answers. Gaps over 20% hurtTypical18%performance. The “clarity” gap for20%typical teams was 58% comparedOutstandingwith 18% on outstanding %FlexibilityResponsibilityStandardsRewardsClarityTeamTotalCommitmentAchieve Radical Clarity Around Goals he first step toward effective performance management is for man-agers to clarify their own goals and a recent Hay GroupT2studyshows how difficult that can study showed a disturbing lack ofclarity on top teams (organizational clarity measures the extent to whichemployees understand what is expected of them and how those expectationsconnect with the organization’s larger goals).Figure 1 shows dramaticallyhigher levels of clarity on outstanding fact the biggest sin-gle difference between great top teams and typical ones was in the level ofinternal on a study conducted by Sarah Mavrinac and Tony Siesfeld for the Ernst & Young Centerfor Business Group partnered with Richard Hackman of Harvard University and Ruth Wageman ofDartmouth College to identify the dynamics of top executive teams and their impact on an initial group of 48 teams,the researchers narrowed their study to 14 teams,manyfrom large global team member represented the head of an organization,amajor business division,or a major Gap
Without clarity, employees lack confidence in managementWorkers at lower levels strongly feel this lack of 2 looks at satis-faction levels for workers planning to leave their organizations within two3years versus those planning to stay study showed that a key rea-son people leave their jobs is that they feel their companies lack among employees planning to stay more than two years at their compa-nies,only 57% felt their organizations had a clear sense of 2: Key Reasons Why Employees Leave Their Companies1Total % SatisfiedEmployees planningEmployees planningGAPto stay more thanto leave in less than(%)Satisfaction with:two years (%)two years (%)1. Use of my skills83%49%34%and abilities2. Ability of top74%41%33%management3. Company has clear 57%27%30%sense of directionWhy clarity matters Why do employees crave clarity? Think about could be more demoral-izing than the realization that your hard work is not focused on achieving over-all company goals,or at least the narrower operational goals of your depart-ment? Employees want to do the “right”thing,but they can only do so if theyknow what the right things ,as we saw in our opening vignette,companies often lack themeans to dialogue effectively about oil refinery client,for example,set a goal to cut see how well the message had gotten through,anoperations team leader held a meeting where he quizzed his team members onwhat they felt was the chief team members produced four differ-ent “top”objectives,including cost-cutting,safety,environmental compliance3 The results are from Hay Group’s Employee Attitudes Survey,which sampled some 300 compa-nies representing more than 1 million survey queried management,professionals,5salespeople,information technologists,and clerical and hourly “gap”referred to inWORKINGthe table is the “satisfaction gap”between workers planning to leave within two years and thosePAPERplanning to stay longer.
and reducing sales processing message hadn’t gotten leader called his team together and created a “transmitter opportunity.”“Don’t you guys realize that if we can’t cut our refining costs by three cents agallon,they’re going to shut us down?”he want to do the“Is that all you need us to do?”replied the team members,taken a clear direction and shared ownership of the cause,team members enthusi-“right” thing, but they canastically cut costs by five cents per gallon over the following year while contin-only do so if they knowuing to maintain good safety and environmental the right things priorities Having too many priorities can lead to lack of ,for example,had worked with a strategy consulting firm that delivered a 249-page reportlisting key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring progress by the good news was that the KPIs gave the top team metrics for measur-ing bad news was that there were 100 of them,and they weren’tprioritized.“It was clear that execution would suffer unless we identified the most impor-tant ones,”says AeroMexico CEO Arturo Barahona.“So we discussed whichones connected most directly with our priorities and where we were in thebusiness cycle,and each team member settled on five chief goals.”By gainingclarity on key objectives,the team greatly increased the odds that signalswould transmit clearly down the buy-in at the top Hay research on teams has shown that it’s not uncommon for team membersto nod their heads in agreement when new goals are set in meetings,then goback to their division or department and carry on exactly as they had effect,they end up sabotaging the ’s why gaining buy-in is essen-tial to effective execution,and dialogueis what makes it created an executive team consisting of six at an applied mission:build strong relationships with top research universities sothat IBM could recruit innovative scientists capable of developing break-6WORKINGthrough problem was that the ,all world-class scientists,PAPER
were used to competing for research dollars and dismissing each other’s ideasto advance their them to work jointly and be held accountablefor business results was going to be very the first group meeting,the unit head simply assigned accountabilities to thevarious team members.“I could see the digging in their heels,”saysHarris Ginsberg,an internal IBM consultant who attended the meeting.“NoGaining buy-in is essential one was going to dictate to them what they should do.”Even if they’d said yesto effective execution, to the unit head’s directives,adds Ginsberg,they would never have dialogue is what makes it ,who helps IBM business units clarify and execute strategy,knew thekey was to get the talking to each he coached the unit head tochange her than hand out directives,he suggested ways shecould stimulate team dialogue about how to meet alsocoached other team members about the need for a “consensus process”on aninterdependent all “got” the next meeting the unit head said,“Our mandate is tocreate breakthrough access to talent at the top universi-ties,we won’t are we going to get it?”At first,Ginsberg recalls,she met one team member raised her was willing to“get out there to the universities,and be more visible — go out with therecruiter and the senior human resources people,”said alsoagreed to help some up-and-coming scientists learn how to develop relation-ships with second team member said he would “help her make some calls.”The ice wasbroken and all the team members eventually took on group responsibilities.“Itwas all about dialogue,”says
Establish Systems and Processes To Create Clarityhy is execution so difficult,even when the goals are clear? Becausegood execution only happens when employee behavior is aligned many managers can’t,won’t or don’tcreate the “transmitter oppor-tunities”required to achieve clarity and get people to do the right execution only happensManagers:can’tbecause they don’t know how to talk with their subordinateswhen employee behavior isabout change and/or poor performance;won’t,because they find it uncomfort-aligned with to give candid feedback;or,simply don’trealize that successful executionwill never happen without ongoing performance of the solution to this problem is creating systems and processes thatforceperformance Dynamics Defense Systems (GDDS) inPittsfield,Mass.,is one company where creating such systems has contributedto dramatic 1999 to 2001,attrition among its valued softwareengineers dropped from 20 percent to grievances droppedfrom 57 to zero,saving hundreds of thousands of ,best of all,earn-ings and profit margins GDDS did In 1999 the $200 million plus defense contractor challenged its employees toimprove the company’s negotiating leverage on bids,and thereby increase mar-gins and accomplish this goal,senior management directed alldepartments to chase out costs,and created numerous processesto transmitthe cost-cutting strategy down the managerial ranks right to the shop floor,which is where they felt many of the best cost-cutting ideas would Simonelli,director of facilities and security,says his department’s goalwas to push labor costs five percent below budget,with a “stretch”goal of was ambitious given that direct applied labor costs had beenrunning 10 to 15 percent over Simonelli’s team slashed appliedlabor hours to an unthinkable 20 percent savingsamounted to about $440,000 on a $2 million budget,or nearly $10,000
How did they do it? The key,Simonelli says,was the processes the companyput in place to enhance dialogue and carry the message to the shop :The Learning Map The company made it easy for employees to understand its broad goals by cre-ating a “learning map,”which graphically outlined how each department and“In the past we just set team linked directly to core employees saw at a glance howthe goals and beat up their jobs fit and assemblers in Simonelli’s group,for example,employees to try to make could readily see that by reducing applied labor hours in a project,GDDSthem, but they probably could increase margins,shorten delivery schedules and raise the chances forwinning new ’t even know why we hadthat goal in the first place.”The Scorecard Managers and direct reports at GDDS meet one on one to create Scorecards,which set five to seven personal annual example,the goals for ship-ping and receiving supervisor Tom Molleur included plans to capture all incen-tive payments for early delivery and to cut direct costs five amanager and subordinate reach agreement goals,they both sign the Scorecardas if it were a the worker’s perspective,this was a dramaticshift,says Newell “Tom”Skinner,at the time director of product delivery.“Inthe past we just set the goals and beat up employees to try to make them,butthey probably didn’t even know why we had that goal in the first place.”Scorecards are “transmitter opportunities”that clarify expectations and linkday-to-day activity to they ’s group ended up cuttingdirect costs by 50 percent — not just five was the key thingthat made it happen? Molleur points to the dialogue workers engaged in at hisweekly progress the group was behind schedule,Molleur usedthe meetings to make sure the workers understood,through the Learning Mapand Scorecards and other processes,how meeting or beating delivery sched-ules could increase competitiveness and win more management did simple things to make sure messages were example the president held monthly “pizza meetings”with every-one whose birthday fell that these “transmitter opportunities,”he9WORKINGwould ask attendees to list their top three goals,and their boss’top three months,everyone could answer the questions.
In a culture of dialogue,extraordinary things extended anopen invitation to any employee who wanted to attend his weekly budgetmeeting with his day an assembler showed up and said apart design was forcing assemblers to work by hand with “dozens of tinyscrews,lock washers and nuts.”Skinner had the assembler meet with processcontrol engineers for a result:a job that had taken 12 hours wascut to four.“The best ideas come from the people doing the job,”says Skinner.“It was only after repeatedOnce the “conversation”got started,it took on ,people weredialogue, including feedbackcoming into Skinner’s office without waiting for the weekly meeting to discussand coaching, that themisalignment of goals and themselves were creating trans-mitter opportunities!underwriter’s behavior alignedwith company goals.”It’s about behavior changeThe processes GDDS installed ultimately changed message ,like a tennis stroke,it didn’t happen quickly or coaching and you have to get it wrong,then make corrections through feedbackand dialogue,before you get it North American insurance companyembarked on a new plan to expand sales with existing presi-dent created nine core value statements and broadcast the ideas ,every manager could recite them by even had cards with the core-value statements right at their message,however,wasn’t sinking outside consultant saw one of thevalue statements on an underwriter’s desk that read “Never knowingly under-sell a customer.”But the consultant listened to several of her calls and realizedthat she consistently failed to explore customer needs or try to up-sell.“Herboss had told her what to do,but didn’t follow through with the necessaryrationale and appeals that would result in behavior change,”says the consult-ant.“As a result,her behavior was out of sync with the business outcomes thecompany wanted.”So the insurer put together a training session and coached its underwriters onways to explore customer needs and broaden the the consultantvisited the same underwriter a few months later,he noted that she was sending10WORKINGbirthday cards to customers and calling during the year — not just at renewalPAPER
time — to identify unfulfilled customer needs.“It was only after repeated dia-logue,including feedback and coaching,that the underwriter’s behavioraligned with company goals,”explains the consultant (see Figure 3).Figure 3: The Coaching Style on Top TeamsPercentage Indicating100%Teams that rely on a “coaching”80%managerial style get betterperformance — percentage of60%60%team members who observed theteam leader using a coaching41%managerial %20%8%0%Outstanding Typical TeamsPoor TeamsTeamsCreative ways to build a culture of dialogueOrganizations committed to managing performance devise innovative ways tomake connections and circulate key -Culver North America,the $600 million division of a $ billion company whose profits tripledbetween 1994 and 2000,chose 70 “growth development leaders”(GDLs) fromall levels of the company to help align behavior with goal was to recruit better GDLs moved through the organiza-tion to see what people were actually doing to meet the recruitment found serious misalignment between goals and behaviors,says JimChickarello,group vice president of worldwide operations and one of example,when job candidates came in for interviews,nobody gavethem a basic overview of the candidates would be leftstanding around because hand-offs between various interviewers were no one had consolidated interviewer evaluations,so therewas no central location where Alberto-Culver managers seeking new peoplecould get a snapshot of all candidates the company had
The top team and the GDLs devised a plan and created simple systems to carryit example they created forms outlining an “agenda”for candidatesthat specified where hand-offs took more waiting GDLsdeveloped take-home materials so that every candidate now receives a thor-ough company ,the group created interviewer-report formsthat must be sent to the manager who might ultimately work with the a result,Chickarello says the company slashed its open-job rate in half,In a true culture of dialogue,from 10 percent to 5 is given candidly and“Hands-off” management means not being consistently in small doses —“on-message”like an IV — and the annualFor years experts have emphasized the importance of dialogue in performancereview becomes a too many managers avoid veteran says annual per-formance appraisals “are like delivering a newspaper to a house with a growl-ing throw the paper on the porch and get away as fast as possible.”“Managers don’t want to deal with confrontation,”says Charlotte Merrell,seniorvice president for Boston-based Jack Morton Company,a leader in event mar-keting.“Even when employees are not doing the right things,they’re usuallyworking are concerned they might demoralize the employeeor cause them to leave.”In fact,the exact opposite is become demoralized when theydon’tget candid performance it comes to annual performancereviews,the issue is not what goes unsaid on the day of the review,but whatgoes unsaid the other259 working days of the ,with the rightkind of performance-based dialogue,managers could eliminate the onerousannual performance review a true culture of dialogue,feed-back is given candidly and consistently in small doses — like an IV — and theannual review becomes a ’t overlook the people factor In sum,goal clarity and performance feedback occur when top managementcreates systems and ensures that line managers are trained to use often do a good job with the former,but underestimate the impor-12tance of the managers got where they are through intellectual andWORKINGPAPER
technical abilities — not through their people skills — and need help tobecome effective performance particular,they need the skills tohelp make those tough performance review sessions go more good news,according to Linda Johnston,vice president for humanresources at Berkshire Bank in Massachusetts,is that “performance coaching isnot rocket practice,most managers can become quite adept atit.”(See sidebar on page 18 for advice on what managers need to do to deliverperformance messages effectively.)Wrong-headed reward policiesMaking Rewards Countcomplete the triple-whammy essages get distorted when managers fail to provide direction andthat leads to disappointingwhen they lack — or don’t use correctly — systems and processes toMprofits, low growth and ensure that performance dialogue takes -headed reward policiespoor stock the triple-whammy that leads to disappointing profits,low growthand poor stock rewards with goals It sounds obvious that rewards have to be aligned with fact the ideathat a company would reward behavior that’s “out of sync”with goals it happens all the reason is that creating reward sys-tems is complex,and the critical importance of reward,which is just one pieceof the equation,is often health insurance company,for instance,wanted to improve customer service,so it invested heavily in a program to train customer service reps learned better voice technique,interviewing skills to ferret out cus-tomer needs,and upselling the company kept the same reward sys-tem as before,basing incentive pay on the number of calls got its first set of customer satisfaction surveys,the results widely agreed that although the staff was courteous,it wasremarkably unhelpful in resolving ? Because,as one rep put it,“If we spend more than four minutes on a call we would never get our bonus.”The strategy required that reps engage in longer,more in-depth conversationswith ,as the rep pointed out,the dysfunctional reward system13WORKINGpunishedreps for doing
Before AeroMexico clarified its strategy,it had an incentive scheme that unin-tentionally rewarded the wrong received merit pay based onon-time arrival incentive helped give AeroMexico the best on-time record of any airline in North this good outcome came withunintended sometimes left the gate before scheduleddeparture times to ensure their bonuses,leaving passengers stranded later changed the key goal to overall customer satisfaction,with on-time arrival as just one dialogue prevents rewards Standard management theory says high-performing workers should get higherrewards than average or below-average at most companies itrarely works that 4 shows the narrow difference separating themerit pay of high performers — stars — from low performers in a Hay surveyof 75 US 4: Average Merit IncreasesDespite all the talk about theimportance of differentitation in2001recent years, organizations still doIncrease to highest performers (Stars)%not differentiate salary increasesAverage %very %A Hay Employee Attitudes survey shows the tragic consequences of failing todifferentiate surveys conducted at 335 companies worldwide,only35 percent of employees said they believed they’d earn more if they improvedtheir performance (see Figures 5 and 6).Top-performing companies believe that well-differentiated rewards — evenforced ranking of employees — leads to better GE CEOJack Welch,for example,says of top performers in his memoir:“The As (the top20%) should be getting raises that are two-to-three times the size given to should get solid increases recognizing their contributions every (the bottom 10%) must get nothing.”
Welch makes it sound so course it’s a “culture of dia-logue”and managers willing to do the required “heavy lifting,”effective rewardpolicies,and eventually great execution,will never many organiza-tions we find managers who want to give stars bigger they seerewards as a zero-sum one group means cutting means making tough and over leaders give the same rea-The company’s performance-son why these tough choices don’t get made:managers avoid conflict in thosetough annual performance-review haven’t had ongoingbased reward system helped theperformance dialogue with their people during the year,and workers assumecompany’s stock price doublethat their performance — even when below par — is good year-two years after going ,rather than confront poor performers with the bad news,many managerschoose the path of least resistance,speeding through performance reviews andspreading merit pay out almost evenly — “like peanut butter,”as one managerput 5: If my performance improves, I will receive better Indicating100%80%60%38%40%35%27%20%0%AgreeNeutralDisagreeManagers at Boston-based John Hancock Financial Services,Inc.,had preciselythis problem.“Our culture six years ago was accepting of being nice to every-one and not wanting to deliver bad news to anybody,”says Page Palmer,seniorvice president for human new CEO came in and championed a highly differentiated pay new system there was no limit on what stars could earn in merit increases,15though more than 20 percent would be performers got
Palmer says that among managers who had to make decisions on merit increas-es,this change required a “willingness to tolerate discord,”and those who haddifficulty with performance-oriented conversations got coaching to improvetheir ,Palmer says,Hancock “usually has some spike in turnover”around bonus time,when disappointed poor performers leave kind of turnover is good for certainly was at says the company’s performance-based reward system helped the com-pany’s stock price double two years after going 6: Is poor performance tolerated at your company?Percent agreeing that poor performance is not tolerated100%80%A less-than-average performance often gets 60%an average reward. 45%Nearly a third of workers 40%surveyed agree that poor32%23%performance is %0%AgreeDisagreeNeutralFind new ways to differentiate merit paySometimes there is little or no money available for merit pay -ward really is a zero-sum organizations must find creative ways tolink rewards to behaviors that bring better example they mightoffer high performers extra training and development opportunities,or clearerlines to the case of two sales hit theirstretch goals of $10 million in sales,but only one hit her should get her bonus,of the one who developed staffmight also get special training Arbella Insurance Group,a $600 million regional company based in16Massachusetts,took another believed that its rewardWORKINGPAPER
system had become too paternalistic and “not very motivating,”says RochellePowers,assistant vice president for information the old system,anyone with a year’s service and no infractions was virtually guaranteed theaverage percent performers might get an extra then managers decided to “pay for performance instead of time on thejob,”says the company reduced the average increase to percent— enough to keep up with the cost of living and maintain companies create aThe other one percentage point ( percent less the percent paid to most“good”workers) went to the top 25 percent of allowedculture of dialogue, research“superior performers”to get seven to 15 percent the end,theshows that they increaseoverall “pot”remained the the best performers got more of , shareholder value,interest from institutionalConclusion investors and employeeialogueis at the center of effective performance . enables managers to cross the “synapses”in organizations where mes-Dsages get blocked or we saw in our opening vignette,Peter’sorganization had clear goals that no one paid much attention was missing from the result was a complete disconnectbetween goals and the behaviors of those entrusted with achieving mention extreme frustration for to execute everything from big-picture strategic goals to narrow indi-vidual objectives is a problem shared by many organizations com-panies get it right — when they have the systems in place to create a cultureof dialogue — research shows that they increase revenues,shareholder value,interest from institutional investors and employee good newsis that the sub-par performance caused by poor execution is itmust be
Four Keys to Delivering Effective Performance the individual who feel forced to defend their self esteem are less receptive — messages do not get through so a safe should build trust,be empathetic and lead with the say what they say is actually more important than whatthey wrong tone can distort the content of the :I asked Joan for feedback regarding your presentation said you were very well prepared and extremely professional,but that your style was a little formal for that particular ’s set up a meeting with Joan so we can work on this:I thought you had better presentation ’s feedback was that there was something about you that makes clients for managers create ongoing dialogue year-round,people will already know where their performance lapses are and will almost alwaysraise them means no surprises,no feelings that the manager is being overly critical,which generally raises defensive (immediately after the event):This was the first time you represented the department at the Executive Committee noticed that you weren’t very comfortable with the more technical me this (six months later,and in response to a question):The reason you haven’t been asked to represent the department again is that you lack the technical expertise to win discord but be a safe atmosphere does not mean avoiding don’t let it get causes people either to shut down or push back on specific behav-iors and their point of performance-oriented dialogue is to reset direction,not to point out :You used a bit of jargon in your said that we pro-vide “hosted collaboration software to connect businesses requiring project-18based resources.”Do you remember? John Smith didn’t appear to you notice how he behaved for the rest of the presentation?
Not this:You know you really turned everybody off when you started to use jargon in that objectives, make accountability explicit, and dia-logue,including performance reviews (though not year-end appraisals) should be about the future,not the what is working and what is not and apply the lessons should come away knowing how behaviors need to be adjusted,what they should do next best dialogue also will set specific objectives and follow-up dates for moni-toring other words,the end result is a :So,we’ve agreed that you’ll spend more time developing the graphics for the next presentation to give them the same impact you create with your text ’s meet two days before so we can discuss them before you this (immediately before the presentation):I hope your graphics are better this time than last
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