Developing Talent – Looking Forward or Backward?
Any business – even a business of one – has talent and needs to develop that talent. Improving skills and knowledge makes a business run more profitably, less wastefully and more productively with more satisfied customers.
One of the main criticisms that I hear is that appraisals
are “an excuse to sack people”. The way
that the Performance Review process is handled in some organisations suggests
that there is more than a grain of truth in this statement. Equally, it betrays a lack of understanding
and/or acceptance of the importance of nurturing talent and weeding out
under-performing and non-contributing members of the team.
Performance management means getting the results that an
organisation, its stakeholders and society want through:
·
Looking forward to what we want to happen;
·
Looking at what’s happening now;
·
Looking back to what happened;
·
Working out what happened in between;
·
Adjusting future behaviour in light of the above.
Where many organisations fall down is that they only look
back. They set targets, but they don’t
keep an eye on what’s going on now. The pace of change in this world is
increasing; what might seem like logical and fair targets now could, in six
months (or less), become unrealistic and even damaging to an organisation. This isn’t intended to be an excuse for not
getting things done, but rather to sound a warning that organisations need to
adapt quickly to their environment.
Those that don’t, die.
Suppose that the weather forecast for today says that it
will be sunny and warm. You decide to go
out. Within an hour of that forecast and
decision, the sky turns grey and the rain starts to fall heavily (not uncommon
in the UK). You haven’t gone out yet, so
you decide to take a raincoat and umbrella.
You react to changing circumstances.
Some people plough on regardless and then wonder why they’ve caught a
cold. The sensible ones go out whilst
it’s sunny, but take wet weather gear with them to allow them to react if
circumstances change.
The above may seem simplistic in the extreme to many, but it
illustrates the point of:
·
Planning with the information currently
available;
·
Keeping an eye out for new information;
·
Adapting and having a contingency plan for when
things change;
·
The consequences of sticking with bad plans or
ignoring significant changes in the environment.
Corporate management has been seen in the past to be
constrained by a desire to please shareholders to the extent that common sense
has been ignored. The average tenure of
CEOs has decreased, so they have less time to make their mark (and money) and
please those who put them there.
Assuming that there’s a sensible process in place, the most
critical part of managing performance is providing timely and constructive feedback
to change behaviour. Rather than
criticism of the past (which can’t be changed) turn it into a review of what has
happened and what you want to see in terms of future performance (the underlying point being that if such
performance is not delivered, the appraisee may have a problem, but not a
surprise). In short, review:
1.
What’s happened;
2.
What’s going on now;
3.
What’s needed;
4.
How does what’s needed differ from what was
originally needed?
5.
How are you going to support what’s needed in
terms of time, training and feedback?
This framework can be applied to anything from simple
behavioural issues to more complex, multi-faceted targets.
I have spent more than half my life delivering change 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. For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.
Labels: Career, Productivity, Strategy, Teamwork
posted by William Martin @ 21:31
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