Category: Strategy Execution / Performance Management

Strategy Execution / Performance Management, Talent Management

Form Follows Function

It’s common to hear us say things that those we admire say. We adopt their ideas over time. You’ll hear me repeat what those I admire say – “there’s nothing so practical as a good theory; good theory in service to a functional outcome.” It is a core value – Form Follows Function.

Since my early teens, I have embraced the Patagonia brand, their “cleanest line” design ethos and generally consider myself a fan – a Patagoniac. Beyond the best products for doing my favorite things, the brand engaged me with their technical marketing, product differentiation and influenced my thinking as a steward and as a designer. In 2003, I started my first business offering learning and performance consulting as form by function design & consulting. I have learned to make this plain in practice over years, and continue to seek the cleanest line, pursuing the elegant, simplest functional solution.

I was recently invited to help a group of HR Business Partners and their leaders level-up some of their talent practices. It’s a profoundly committed group of people who give their lives to “missions.” When making an effort to design a process or practice, it’s helpful to borrow some thinking and skills from practical problem solving.

In problem solving, the logic that to agree on solutions, we must first agree on the problem is accepted; to identify best solutions, we must understand the functional “job to be done.” I asked the group, when you plan missions, do your missions look like this (referencing image above)? Or, in order to be successful, must you first choose the mission? The same is true of your management and talent practices.

Where organizations go wrong is that they fail to balance complexity with value as they build these processes… as each additional element is added, evaluate the trade-off between the complexity it brings to the overall process and the impact it will have on the original business objective.

Effron & Ort, One Page Talent Management, 2010, p. 4-5.

For example, you may design a succession process with the purpose of lowering risk to business continuity or you may desire to build a culture of leadership stewardship and engagement. You may need both – but they will not have the same priority and time horizon. These choices will yield different best solutions. You may be using benchmarking as the basis for what a mature process will look like. Be careful that you don’t make it your plan to effectively deliver on day 1 what your “benchmark” comparison companies achieved – in a context different than yours – through a series of efforts over years by a learning and improvement loop.

You may design a performance management process with an interest to better align resources to priorities in deploying strategy for execution. You may desire review discussions to drive meaningful development plans. You may be laying the ground work to differentiate rewards, reinforcing a performance culture. Again, in what priority order and timing.

It’s normally easiest to start with your top business objectives. In light of these, prioritizing talent practices may be clearer. ALL of the value of talent practice work will come from successful implementation and adoption by a set of stakeholders. Simplicity and clarity in the priority jobs to be done and the benefits for each stakeholder will improve your chances of achieving a productive outcome. Focus, implement, improve, repeat.

Here is a simple example of an interview I originally developed early in my career that has served me and others well in engaging groups of stakeholders to improve talent practices. Even if the solution seems obvious to you, create the pull for intervention in your organization through a small effort to engage your stakeholders to build ownership.

What are your top lessons learned from building talent practices?

How do you engage your customers to build ownership?

Management, Strategy Execution / Performance Management

The Rest of The Story – Performance Management Jobs to Be Done

  
I don’t document a formal budget or balance a checkbook. I accept there’s risk and potential benefits I’m leaving on the table, but the return doesn’t merit the investment for me, personally. And, I have other habits that ensure things are within control and that the jobs of a budget and checkbook get done. 

Accenture is making news lately by abolishing performance reviews. No judgment there, but it’s only part of the story. I’m sure there is a countermeasure for how the organization ensures people are aligned at scale (e.g., how strategy is broken down to individual goals, actuals vs. planned are reviewed and responded to, feedback is provided and lessons learned about strengths to extend and things to change are identified, accountability and recognition/rewards are dealt to reinforce behavior). Is it responsible to make all this noise without ever discussing how the purpose and outcomes of performance management are being accomplished? I am, though, intrigued to learn what they’re changing to and how it accomplishes the jobs to be done. 

Many of you are thinking,
“…we have reviews and don’t accomplish any of these things”

…Or, “that’s not why we have reviews.”

If you’re cheering for reviews to be abolished it’s likely because you view them as illegitimate. You manage to cope and don’t see the point…for your team. However, as someone who has gone into a few companies that didn’t have performance management, I can tell you this wasn’t terribly functional or effective either. And, the people didn’t like it…because the jobs weren’t getting done. 

Where’s the rest of the story?

Career Development, Development, Engagement, Leadership, Management, Models, Strategy Execution / Performance Management

Fundamentals: One-on-one meetings

partnershipLeadership is socially demanding. Interaction with those you lead (and hopefully serve) is necessary. I’ve found that it is very unlikely that we as leaders will consistently behave as we wish to – recognizing, coaching, supporting, developing, empowering and engaging…more – without creating some type of structural space/time and process to enable it. A practice that I use and recommend is creating a norm around meeting with each member of your team for one-on-one discussions to focus on their personal learning and performance.
Commit to meeting with each of your direct reports on a consistent frequency. For me, the minimum is 30 minutes bi-weekly. It’s their meeting, so I ask them to schedule the time in open space on my calendar at a time that works for them, booking 3 – 6 months into the future. I’m available for more if they want or need it. Our meetings do get moved as needed, but very rarely cancelled.
I require a written update around a loosely structured agenda built around roles I want to play as their leader:
  • to provide recognition – My Accomplishments (what have you accomplished since we met last?)
  • to serve their needs and support them – My Needs (what can I do that will be helpful to you?)
  • to build trusting relationships – FYI’s (no action needed updates), My Team (skip-level updates)
  • to engage and develop – My Development (what have you planned or accomplished to learn, experience and connect to develop yourself?)
  • to coach and empower performance – My Project Updates (what’s the status / how are you planning to progress?)
The purpose of the written update sent in advance is it allows us to make better use of our time together discussing and responding to the situation rather than using our limited time describing it.
Feedback I’ve received on the process:
  • I get a sense of satisfaction reporting my progress and it forces me to acknowledge ownership of my work.
  • Conversely, knowing the time is coming where I will report on my status and what has been accomplished (or not) also motivates me; I want to avoid having nothing to report but excuses.
  • I like having the consistency. It’s easier to get my needs met without feeling I need to “interrupt” as often.

I’ve provided the same update to my bosses over the years and the process makes me better. One thing that is certain is that if I, as the leader, didn’t set the expectation and require the process, entropy would set in; preparation and the good use of our time would end and I’d likely have what most others do with their time.

Committing to this structure and process makes me a better leader and my team members better performers. It also scales really nicely for those of us that manage global, remote or virtual teams.
If you decide to give it a try, let me know how it works for you.
Leadership, Strategy Execution / Performance Management

Feel good or Be good?

Your expectations impact us both.

Helper: “Do you want to feel good or be good?”

Client: “Both!”

Helper: “Agreed. When we are good, we should feel good about it. If we focus on being good, we’ll get both.”

Client: “It doesn’t sound good. It sounds like you’re going to tell me we’re not very good.”

Helper: “Well it depends. What do you expect? How good do you need to be and why?”

The point – being good, better or even great requires a standard. Being good also requires coming to terms with where you are and doing the things that will make you good.

As the saying goes, feelings make great followers but terrible leaders; feelings make great servants but terrible masters.

Management, Problem Solving, Strategy Execution / Performance Management

Speed Kills.

Faster is not always better. Speed chess isn’t great chess. Great isn’t the point. It’s fast. Watch them obsess over the clock…double and triple tapping to be sure.

“If you want to make me twice as smart and helpful, give me 10 minutes notice that we’re going to meet and what about.” This was my plea to a leader I worked with. He would drop in to discuss strategy for important and complex topics on a moments notice. This almost always caught me highly focused on another topic and made it difficult to switch gears and offer the quality of help that I expect of myself. It seemed as though everything was being dealt with as a crisis out of habit and preference rather than necessity and each topic was discussed and planned for individually and not as a system – or at least utilizing the same resources.

Tony Schwartz’s “why don’t we act in our own interest?” brought this all back to me. While the blog is familiar, the synthesis was new. The level of proactivity vs. reactivity that we focus our efforts and resources towards causes us to think differently, ultimately changing the interests (i.e., need or problem) we work to fulfill. We intuitively apply this, but it seems we don’t rationally consider how the time-focus of a planning effort changes how the mind works and impacts outcomes.

…we don’t make a connection between our current behavior and its future consequences. As Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi economist, put it, “Leaders don’t have time for the future because they’re too busy with the present.”

We’re familiar with the fight or flight instincts that are triggered in response to threat. We physiologically become dumber under these circumstances as blood leaves our brain towards our extremities to support the fighting or fleeing activities. I had not, however, considered that such a condition is created when we work on things that are of great urgency and perhaps importance. In my experience, importance becomes less clear with greater urgency and pressure. When we are fixated on short-term interests we make “dumb” decisions relative to our long-term interests. If we do this long-enough, we may not even be clear on what our long-term interests are. When we allow the focus of our efforts to be too urgent, it’s like bad ergonomics – the cumulative effects hurt you over time because you’re doing it wrong. You’re using parts of your brain intended for mere survival.

Time Matrix for prioritization

The good news is while we may “lack vision” or “have no strategy,” it’s likely as much a matter of process and not ability. This isn’t a new idea. It’s FranklinCovey’s Habit 1 – Be Proactive. When we work on things that are important and not urgent, we make better decisions because we literally plan differently and serve greater interests and values. The bad news is the environment always wins.

Do you reward crisis managers more than those who consistently deliver to plan and implement in a way that integrates?

Do you find yourself inflating the level of urgency of tasks (or procrastinating) because, if you’re honest with yourself, you prefer a crisis?

Are you bothered by the ambiguity of the not urgent but fundamentally important?

Change, Leadership, Learning, Management, Strategy Execution / Performance Management, Strengths

Do You Moneyball?

I recently saw Moneyball for the first time on a flight and was jumping out of my seat. There are so many clips in the movie that parallel how OD & Talent processes can enable performance. My favorites:

1. GM, Billy Beane confronts his scouts about the subjective discussion of perspective talent – “…you’re just talking…”
2. Near the end of film, the Owner of the Red Sox invites Billy to Boston. Over coffee, there’s a brilliant series of lines where he say’s to Billy that anyone that’s not using his system the following year is a dinosaur.

I’d love to (plan to) use these clips in a session with leadership to frame up the talent system improvements that most organizations are working to implement. I knew immediately that I wanted to write on the topic, but David Almeda beat me to it with his post Hitting a Home Run in Talent Management: The Value of HR Analytics. The key point to me is somewhat buried in the middle – “Doing this work effectively requires an understanding of the organization’s value chain: How does the workforce help the organization make or save money? It also requires a clear understanding of the company’s future strategy” (or in how we will make or save money in the future). This same thinking applies to organizations with a purpose other than making money as well.

Baseball games are won when your team has more runs than your opponent. In Moneyball, they show how the Oakland Athletics moved from static score watching and individual performance analysis to analysis of the dynamic process of run creation and then systematically build a team, as closely as possible – given present constraints, around effectively performing this process of run creation.

How do you and your organization win? Do you view it as static through lag measures and a “great man or woman” profile for talent? Or, do you manage and enable performance in those things that actually build performance with individuals positioned in area of strength to “get on base” to enable the organization to score?

Change, Engagement, Leadership, Learning, Strategy Execution / Performance Management

Five Questions to Reflect

Build reflection into your processes to increase learning and improvement. Use these simple questions to facilitate an actionable planning session:

What is my (our) role and purpose?

What am I (are we) doing well that should continue or even do more of?

What am I (are we) doing that requires improvement?

What should I (we) start doing?

What should I (we) stop doing?

Expected results:

  • everyone learns something
  • innovative ideas are developed as people play off each others contribution (aka Catchball)
  • plans are better aligned
  • the team is more engaged in and committed to the plans that are made (and question the leaders’ awareness of what’s really going on much less)

Some Practical tips, should you try it:

  1. The goal is learning – the tone should be set by the leader. Prime the group with an idea of your own for each of the questions. Express your value for the activity and the good you expect to come from it. Praise some things that others are doing well, point out something under your own control you recognize needs improvement, an opportunity you’d like to see the group capitalize on, etc. Some of the leaders I’ve helped thought it was best to leave the team to work on the exercise and then return after 90 – 120 minutes to discuss their ideas.
  2. As a facilitator, I find it works well to project a document for recording notes and summarizing key points for each question. The participants reading the idea seems to stimulate more questions, clarification and conversation as they see the ideas summarized.
  3. End the session with a recap and summary of the key points and any agreements made. I have found it effective to ask members of the team to lead this.

More broadly, discussions with the word “review” in the title (also, debriefs) should honor this same reflective intent. The idea – there are lessons here that should guide our future plans and actions. Don’t limit your conversation to only the misses and opportunities. Ask, why are we experiencing the success we are having and how do we make sure it continues?

Change, Leadership, Strategy Execution / Performance Management

Measures that Lead

James Slavet’s recent post Five New Management Metrics You Need To Know at Forbes is excellent. It presents five examples of lead measures (he calles them inputs) that organizations are using to drive performance. I call them lead measures because I first learned the concept of how important it is to have both lead and lag measures identified was in a presentation DDI President Bob Rogers delivered after the release of his excellent book, Realizing the Promise of Performance Management. His presentation was simple and impacting – effective strategists and leaders are looking forward, planning and developing capabilities that will cause the outcomes sought. In contrast, many more often see the situation where the person in charge reminds us of the budget targets that were given, where we are for the past month, YTD and YOY…followed by praise, reward, threats and consequences; quite Pavlovian. Imagine watching a baseball or football game where the commentary and coach interviews revolve only around the number of runs / points each team had scored…no on-base percentage, yards-per-carry, time of possession, defense formations, etc. It would be moronic. There are important outcomes and status towards those outcomes that are important to measure and review, but the real work is done when performers are aligned with actions that will cause success and measures of these drivers are identified, implemented and tracked to create change.

This Post provides a couple of nice examples. My favorite analogy is likening lead measures to the arrows on a bowling lane (and this video cracks me up).

Lead measures focus talent on behaviors that will cause success. So why aren’t they more effectively used? I believe it’s fundamentally cultural. It’s difficult to choose and use the right lead measures if you’re not in the business. As a leader, with all the related demands, you’re not spending time at the process level where value is created unless you make it a priority because you see it as your role to serve the processes and those that execute them. The best I’ve witnessed are from leaders that practice and value gemba walks. With a balanced set of lead and lag measures not only will outcomes improve, but you’ll know why. You will likely even be able to foresee opportunities and threats much earlier while there’s time to mitigate, reduce losses and capitalize on opportunities.