Round Pegs In Square Holes – Identifying, Developing And Building Skills
If you’re not suited
for a role, you won’t well perform in it, however hard you try.
Some people seem to be “good at anything”. Maybe, but even they will have their
preferred roles.
Someone who prefers working on their own or in small groups
will not flourish in a situation where they have to work in large groups of
people. Equally, someone who enjoys
dealing in numbers won't enjoy a role which requires them to write wordy reports
(unless the reports contain substantial amounts of numerical data).
Happily, there are usually thousands of people who meet our
needs in whatever position. The trick is
to find them and make sure that their past performance showcases their true talents.
I enjoy: learning new things, organising, planning, thinking
things through, getting up and speaking in public, training others, making
decisions, being with others, bouncing ideas off others, problem-solving, thinking on my feet and
advising others.
What does that suit me
to? Any number of “general management”
positions which I can learn. It makes me
an ideal consultant as this job requires me to get to know a business fast,
analyse a situation, develop an action plan and agree it with others, work with people at all
levels, teach them new skills, monitor progress against plans and solve
problems along the way.
Although I don’t feel comfortable “selling”, I've learned how to do it. I don’t have a “thick skin”. I don’t handle
rejection easily. I’m not good at detail or taking my time over making a decision.
Sometimes you may have to put someone onto a role that you know isn’t suited to them because it
will give them valuable experience, teach them new skills or build awareness of
how a certain part of the business works.
They may not like the role, but as long as they understand that there will
be an end to it, it helps. During my days as a trainee banker, I was sitting sorting out paper vouchers relating to customer account entries. I was bored and said so. One of the other staff working with me said "When you're a CEO, you'll remember how hard people work in the back office." I never forgot that comment made in 1985. An appreciation of what pthers go through is just as important as knowing your own job.
The key is identifying from the start the sort of
roles that your business has, what skills and attitude they require, and the sort of
personality and experience needed to fit them.
When you fill those roles, look for proof from past performance or
ability to think that the potential candidate is “right”. Give them an “orientation session” and time
to settle into the new role (at least 3 months). Some large organisations expect to hire the
“trained whale” - someone who already knows the job and can perform perfectly
from day 1. In reality, even if they
know the job, they don’t know how it’s done in your organisation and will take time to settle in. Force the pace and watch disaster hit you.
I have spent more than half my life working in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging”economies. With more than 20 years in the world financial services industry running different service, operations and lending businesses, I started my own Performance Management Consultancy and work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.
Labels: Career, Productivity, Strategy, Teamwork
Managing People, Not Performance
The great and the good of appraising tend to state that focus
should be on results, not
people. This ignores the fact that it’s people who produce the results. Different people are motivated by different
things. When you manage performance, you
manage people’s actions and behaviour.
I was once asked to run a workshop on “Performance
Management”. The first question I asked
was “What results do you want?” Silence. This is a typical problem that one finds time
and time again: if an organisation doesn’t know what result it wants, how can
it:
·
Communicate it to those who will make it happen?
·
Define the “success factors” or “metrics”?
·
Identify resources needed?
·
Break it into manageable tasks?
·
Set limits (if any) on what can/can’t be done?
Because no one could define the end result expected, they
couldn’t then communicate it. So far, not promising. I then had to infer what they wanted, develop a Training Plan and send it
off. Do you see what’s happening
here? The appraisee doesn’t know what
the end result is, guesses what’s needed, and may end up going off on the wrong
track. At the end of the year (or
workshop in this case), the appraisee will be told, “Well, you did OK, but what
we really wanted was…”
After deciding what the organisation is about and what it
needs to achieve, the next step is communicating
this. The army’s “leadership by objectives”
process follows a simple, yet effective framework:
·
The commander gives orders in a way that ensures
subordinates understand his intentions, their missions and the context of those
missions;
·
Subordinates are told what they are to achieve
and the reason for it;
·
Subordinates are given the resources needed;
·
The commander uses minimum control measures;
·
Subordinates decide how best to achieve their
mission.
What happens in business is interference from interdepartmental
rivalry, budgetary control, “policy” and the legal minefields of employment
law, advertising standards, diversity awareness, consumer rights, human rights
and any other legislation that can be brought to bear. Result: misinterpretation, massaging,
morphing, micro-management, mis-measuring and manipulation. The gaps between targets and achievable
results become wider in the eyes of those whose job it is to achieve them. This ends up with lack of commitment resulting in under-performance. The flip side is that appraisees then risk
mis-selling products to meet targets.
So, a robust appraisal or review system needs to ensure
that:
·
The organisation knows what its objectives are;
·
It communicates
them;
·
Employees understand
and accept them;
·
Those employees understand how they will each
contribute to achieving those objectives;
·
They have the resources to attain the objectives;
·
Petty rules
don’t get in the way, except to ensure compliance with ethical or professional
standards.
The system exists to ensure that all stakeholders benefit
from the organisation’s existence, that results are achieved and that employees
can grow. It is not there to “justify HR’s job” or to line the pockets of
shareholders and senior management alone.
Since the global economic crisis started, shareholders have become much
more vocal in their condemnation of poor CEO performance and in vetoing pay
bonuses that weren’t justified by results.
Reviewing employees is not a once-a-year affair. There are still organisations where only one
review is held every year, by which time it’s too late to improve any
performance issues that need to be improved.
Assuming that objectives have been set, understood and accepted, both
appraisee and appraiser then have to be able to track progress. Modern technology often means that some
measurements can be delivered faster to those who need them, enabling them to
take corrective action as needed.
To achieve objectives, people and organisations need to
behave in a certain way. Depending on
the job, the level of staff concerned and other factors, one needs a way of
defining, measuring and weighting those behaviours. For example, a junior programmer in an IT
department usually doesn’t need the same degree of interpersonal skills as, say,
a Customer Service Representative. Rating
the programmer on interpersonal skills doesn’t serve the organisation and yet
this can happened. I once asked my HR department if they had
ever reviewed which behaviours should be weighted higher or lower depending on
the department and job undertaken. The
answer was an embarrassed silence (and this in a large, quoted company).
Performance is about people; people are different; a “one
size fits all” approach is doomed to failure.
I have spent more than half my life working in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging”economies. With more than 20 years in the world financial services industry running different service, operations and lending businesses, I started my own Performance Management Consultancy and work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.
Labels: Productivity, Strategy, Teamwork
Effective Goal Setting
Formal Performance Appraisal (or Review) is the last stage
in the annual Performance Management cycle.
In a recent article, I mentioned various “must-have” criteria for what I
considered a robust (not perfect) system.
One of these criteria was relevance and I stated that it wasn’t unusual to find individual
objectives that were totally different to those of the organisation. Goal
Setting is one of the most critical parts of the performance management
cycle and should be based on 3 factors:
1.
What the organisation stands for (its “mission”
or “vision”);
2.
Review of previous performance;
3.
What the organisation wants to achieve in the
long and short-term based on 1 and 2 above.
If you were to ask what banks stood for after the various
scandals reported in 2012, what would you answer? You would be right to be in doubt after the
breaches of trust and (some might say) ethical conduct that were reported. For the most part, the breaches were
committed by a relatively few highly-paid employees who put profit (or lining
their pockets?) above all other considerations, but banks now have a bad name
and aren’t trusted.
Thanks to current pressures from various (misguided?)
stakeholders, management thinking horizons tend to be limited to one year or
even one quarter, meaning that people’s energy is focussed mainly short-term,
with no thought for the next 5-10 years.
At times, management may not set goals until several months
have passed. There’s no excuse for this;
if they’ve done the budget properly, they should know what’s needed. I have waited up to six months for my goals,
with the result that they tend to be “fudged” and the appraisal is necessarily
“fudged” as well.
Current fashionable thinking requires that staff goals be:
Stretching
Measurable
Achievable
Realistic
Time-bound
These apply to people, countries, departments/teams. However, what may be “SMART” for one won’t be
for another for various reasons (experience, knowledge, local law, market
forces, etc). Was it so “smart” for
banks to set the targets they did for increasing lending in the run-up to the
global financial crisis? What about PPI
in the UK? These goals were stretching,
measurable and were achieved, but at what cost?
Were they really “realistic”?
The problem that many staff see in so-called “Smart goals”
is that they are just the opposite. The
table below provides “employee perceptions” of what “Smart goals” risk becoming.
Description
|
Real Meaning
|
Stretching
|
“Over-ambitious/unachievable unless
we break rules/act unethically”.
|
Measurable
|
“How”?
|
Achievable
|
“We have neither the staff,
systems nor budget”.
|
Realistic
|
“In your dreams”
|
Time-bound
|
“We’ve been given 6 months to
achieve this?”
|
Goals must unite the whole business, not divide it. Example: a bank’s Risk Department’s primary
objective (minimise risk) may be at odds with the primary objective of Corporate
Lending (increase profitable, income-producing assets). If Risk overrides Lending, the result is
either lower risk but lower income and loss of reputation as a lender. If Lending overrides Risk, this means higher
income but potential increased write-offs of bad debts meaning reduced
profitability.
The trend in many organisations nowadays is to use a
“Balanced Scorecard” – a yardstick that looks at results in four areas:
·
Customer Experience
·
Operations/processes/systems
·
Finance/profitability
·
Learning & growth
Different functions, departments and teams will weight
different aspects more heavily than others.
In the end, if goals set are seen as unrealistic, expect
either mixed performance or cynical manipulation if not downright fraud in
meeting them.
I have spent more than half my life working in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging”economies. With more than 20 years in the world financial services industry running different service, operations and lending businesses, I started my own Performance Management Consultancy and work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email . My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.
Labels: Financial, Productivity, Strategy, Teamwork
