In Pursuit of Excellence

This post briefly describes the elements of a Human Resource Development (HRD) system (see diagram), and how the elements are integrated in an ideal system.

People flow effortlessly without friction through an integrated human resource development system, just like product and work flows through any production process. “Integrated system” simply means that all the processes and practices of the HRD system shown below cannot be stand-alone.

The critical input to the HRD system is the company’s strategy, and the most important element that aligns all the HRD processes to strategy is the job write-up, or position specification.

 Integrated HRD Starts With Alignment, the Position Spec is the Enabler

What is the company’s strategy and what are the key challenges the company faces? How does each function and its positions support the strategy and help to address the challenges? The job write-up is the justification for a position’s existence. The write-up must clearly connect the position to strategy, and describe how the position helps support the strategy and achieve goals.

Strategy is cascaded down through the company, as goals are set with increasing levels of specificity. Accountability is established until each function and each position is clearly aligned with the top and is directly responsible for a portion of the strategy.

Promotions, hiring and placement decisions are driven by the position spec. The position spec serves as the basis for recruiting and interviewing, and eventually placing a person into a vacant position. If the company knows what positions will come vacant through known attrition (retirements, promotions, backfills). The write-up for the position being vacated is the list of qualifications the successor will need (succession management).

People are groomed for advancement ahead of the need and are ready to move up when the need arises, minimizing the impact of attrition. The performance management process is the planning and monitoring tool for development of employees, and provides essential input to the training and development function. Input from performance management plans is used to determine the curriculum for meeting the developmental needs of individuals and the position needs of the company.

Exploring the wonderful world of competency-based employee development, the model of preference in the business world. Possibly scarier yet…this is how our education system thinks and operates too.

This is a segue into strengths-based leadership–be looking for more.

As it is important to be able to perform the job to which a person is assigned, focus is typically on beefing up any areas where a person “Needs Improvement”. Target: an “Acceptable Level of Competency”.  With all that attention devoted to fixing what’s broken, what happens to those competencies where a person “Exceeds Expectations”?

In the world of health care, what does “flatline” mean? (HINT: it ain’t good!)

Moral of the story…Let the Rabbits Run.

 (apologies for any funky layout issues…working on it, but not one of my “strengths”….definitely “needs improvement”.)

(see ACCOUNT (+) ABILITY = RESULTS (?) for Part One)

This is not rocket science! A simple formula in which accountability is just one element:

Clear expectations +

Knowledge, skills and abilities +

Accountability +

Follow-up

= Results.

The Formula In Action

1. Leaders set S.M.AR.T. expectations. Better yet, involve the do-ers in determining what needs to be done. Then, leaders provide the template through modeling, and performance management and coaching helps keeps people on track;
2. Don’t set your people up for failure! Communication, Training and Development must provide knowledge, skills, and abilities people need, to have a realistic chance to deliver on their accountabilities;
3. Accountability is nothing more than making sure people know what they are expected to do, and what the impacts are of their delivering the goods as expected, as well as the consequences of not doing so;
4. Follow-up includes manager / subordinate communication, regular performance management updates, and coaching when necessary to get a person back on the right track;
5. Results are realized in the form of goals being met, and in desired behaviors that have become routine — expectations, or norms;
6. Adjust expectations, repeat process

IF there is involvement in goal setting of those accountable with achieving the goals (engagement), and a clear connection to the top (alignment) then the level of commitment to achieve the goals ramps up.

Effective performance management kicks in, avoiding “fails to meet expectations” at year-end by truly managing performance throughout the year. If there is a performance issue, clarifying expectations and coaching to improve performance comes into play at the time and place of need.

Engage > Align > Execute!

Without naming names, but in all honesty…what do you think about performance management? What makes it work? What makes it a curse and a time-waster? Feel free to vent here. If you want to use me to mask your identity, reply in private. I’m not bashful.

Is performance management a semi-annual ritual done in “check-the-box” fashion to keep HR off your back? Or is performance management a truly value-adding tool to help manage strategy execution?

My first experience with performance management was humorous. It was November. My manager came to us in a panic after a meeting for managers hosted by HR. The exchange follows, to the best of my recollection of 18 years ago…

(mgr) Performance management plans need to be done in two weeks!

(me)   OK, what are our goals for next year?

(mgr)  I’m not talking about next year, we need to wrap up THIS year’s assessments!

(me)   What was our plan for this year anyway?

(mgr)  Plan?! Just make up some decent-sounding goals for what you’ve done. Be sure to include what you did to accomplish them. I like this…if we skip the assignments we screwed up on, then our whole group “exceeds” expectations!

(me)   Should we maybe work ahead for next year?

(mgr) Don’t cause trouble-we have a good thing going here….

This is not from Dilbert. This was a Fortune 300 company, no exaggerations except for the last line–our group did work ahead for the next year’s plan. But we were precocious.  Decent performance management practices were still a few years down the road for the rest of the company.

Here’s the theory in three basic phases.

ONE–PLAN. Sometime before the first of the year, complete the goal-setting / cascading process. One of the classic “things that make you go hmmmm…” is that the goal-setting phase for some companies’ performance management processes stretches well into the first quarter. Hmmmm…

The ideal is to cascade goals down the pyramid (yes Virginia, ‘stuff’ does roll downhill) starting at the very top with the company’s mission / vision and critical goals and objectives for the coming period. Output of the cascade: each individual has a clearly defined set of accountabilities that are clearly connected to the top of the organization. Also, an enhanced level of engagement and commitment, as the do-ers were involved in the goal-setting process.

TWO—ESTABLISH MEANINGFUL METRICS. How do you know if you’re winning or losing if you don’t keep score? Since people will be assessed on how much they did or didn’t deliver on their accountabilities, it’s critical to establish quantifiable means to objectively determine rankings. Especially when you’re messing with someone’s assessment, leave the subjectivity in the janitors’ closet.

Top attributes for “meaningful” metrics: ability to update real-time, and actionable by those who are accountable.

THREE: REGULAR UPDATES. How often should a manager and an employee discuss the employee’s performance management plan? If all the above is in place, a plan update meeting is a critical tool for strategy execution. Yet, data has shown that the average number of performance management-related meetings is 1-2 a year. No wonder so many of the “fails to meet expectations” crowd feel blind-sided. If sub-standard performance continues throughout the year with no communication, no coaching for improvement, they were indeed blind-sided. And chances are that goals fell by the wayside too.

There should be no surprises at year-end assessment time. Just another update meeting to get ready for the next planning period. And a lot of “exceeds expectations” and goals met along the way.

Egad, reading this back that all sounds entirely too simple. So, what goes wrong? Why do so many struggle with such a basic, yet essential, process?

At his blog for Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Ben S. had some interesting thoughts in a post titled Mission Critical. Ben’s proposition is that a company’s mission statement …  “should be used to define how the company treats its customers AND its employees.”

Good for the goose, good for the gander—Ben’s premise way oversimplified. Go read the whole thing and say HOWDY to Ben!

I added my 2c, below.

One of the fundamental issues with missions in general is their lack of legs-so often they are nothing but cool words on the wall. What better way to make a meaningful connection than to draft an internal mission consistent with the external mission, which is supposed to drive everything that happens in the business in the first place?

Whenever I’ve been in a position to have an influence on these things, I’ve championed cascading of the core mission: departments and even individuals draft their mission and objectives based on how they support the core mission. This ties in perfectly to performance management which, in theory, should be the executioner / enforcer of the mission. If I set my performance management deliverables based on how I support the core mission and that of my department, our focus is aligned top to bottom. I am then assessed based on how well I meet my deliverables, a.k.a. whether I do my part to achieve the company’s mission.

The mission all of a sudden has legs. And, the much-maligned performance management process has gained a bit of credibility as it directly supports execution of the core mission.

A last thought. When I see “we believe…” in mission statements, my overpowering inclination is to say “PROVE it!” Seriously, what is the operational definition of (insert belief here)? What does it look like in action? What is the expectation of me, to successfully support (insert belief)? How will I be held accountable?

What blows me away is that this is not by any stretch rocket science, yet it is so rare to find an organization that overtly and visibly lives by the intent of their mission, and the employees actually deliver the goods on their aligned accountabilities.

Without revealing anything incriminating…. what is the level of accountability you have seen where you work, or have worked in the past? What makes it high, what makes it low?

If you haven’t caught it yet, one of my key themes here is strategy execution. Without accountability, nothing happens. Or, the wrong things happen. What exactly is “accountability” relative to job performance and attaining company goals? These are two simple words where the whole is indeed much larger than the parts:

Account: a reason for a particular action or event; To account for: provide an explanation or justification; to make sure something is there. Can you account for these results, (or lack thereof)?

Ability: the quality of being able to do something. Having the capacity or capability to perform as expected.

Surely I’m not the only one who has stewed over the issue of “accountability”…. which is really an issue only when there is a lack of it. The easy translation of “lack of accountability” is someone not doing their job or not doing what is expected of them.

How can “lack of accountability” be an issue without heads rolling? A trickier question– how can good people not be accountable? Just as there are people who may choose to do as little as possible (notmyjob, notmyjob…), there are those with good intentions, and a solid desire to do the right thing. But, there can still be a lack of accountability.

If you know something is yours to do, and have all the tools at your disposal to do it, why would it not get done?

If Oatmeal, then Nike…..

I have some ideas on this. But I want to hold off and see what the general feeling is out there, without my muddying the waters ahead of time.

See “Accountability–Not Rocket Science” for more.

(If this is your first time visiting In Pursuit of Excellence, I hope you will take a couple of minutes to read the “ABOUT” page (see link at the top right). “About” describes the way Excellence is organized, mission and intent. It will help you find the topics and posts that are of the most interest to you)