Examples include:

• 'keeping it in the boat'
• 'focus on the processes and not the medals' and
• 'the aggregation of marginal gains'

'Keeping it in the boat' relates very much to recognising those things that we can control that are likely to lead to great results. Focussing on what we can make happen and not worrying too much about what others are doing.'

'Focus on the processes and not the medals' is a mantra for at least some of the cyclists - especially the pursuiters. Forget about the medals and the glory - just focus on executing well those things that you know make for great performance.

'The aggregation of marginal gains' is another cycling mantra and refers to the significant difference that many small, practical changes can make to performance. While individually each of these changes seems to trivial to make a real difference the net effect leads to a significant improvement.

In some organisaitons you get the feeling that the domninant - if unstated - mantras are:

• 'Leave well enough alone' or
• 'No-one ever got the sack for being mediocre'.

Please do share your favourite mantras - Olympic or otherwise.

We might even find a small prize for the best!

"Most managers become managers because they have mastered the hard skills needed for a specific job. Unfortunately, most haven’t mastered the soft skills of interpersonal relations."

Creating More Effective Managers Through Interpersonal Skills Training - TRACOM Group

But our discussion made me realize a few things...first in world that has seen us increase our productivity and output to the breaking point, we are now faced with workers who simply want to cut to the chase for the sake of expediency so they can "fix" their problems asap. Our honest communications are less about understanding issues or the root cause but rather about getting to the end quickly and getting on to the next issue, we are not looking for a dialogue or exchange rather just tell me what is broken so I can fix it...often without really looking at how we got there....or better yet should it even be fixed?

This led me to another thought....in our rush to cut to the chase are we missing the point? At first my reaction was Yeah! I agree give it to them both guns blazing, the client needs to know what the problem is! But when I dug a little deeper my question becomes how did I get to my conclusion...did I truly give it a lot of due diligence? What was my analysis? Did I fall in the same trap of expediency and wanting to solve my own issues quickly...which is to fix my client ;-)

I have been reading a lot of terrific blogs and articles lately and I realized that my own thought process is often skewed...because I am in a hurry to answer questions or "fix" issues that I face. What I mean by that is my first reaction is to look for a reason why this or that happened, when I should instead look at what data I have in front of me...hard data and see if their is a pattern or a reason to the madness.

Recently I have been noticing some terrific analysis on the strangest subjects such as this blog  (http://benfry.com/writing/archives/147) about the relationship between a football player's IQ and the position he plays on the field. (credit to Dave Eaves on this one!) This made me realize that in my everyday reality am I too quick on the draw and ready to convince myself that I have the answer...hey I am smart guy I must know what the answer/issue is?

I think we could all take a bit more of a step back when facing everyday question, problems or situations and see what data we have in front of us and actually TAKE THE TIME to analyze a bit and see if we don't discover a new approach or way to tackle the problem. I speak for myself when I say that I intend to take my own advice and try and incorporate this attitude more in my daily work and home decisions.

On that note...I believe we could also benefit from a crash course in efficient data analysis....as their can also be the possibility of analysis paralysis...which can mean taking no decision at all....which can be worst than a hasty one!

According to CNN and CareerBuilder.com, one of the major Job Trends for 2008 is More Flexible Work Arrangements. According to the CNN article, "Sixty percent of employers report they currently offer flexible schedules to employees and 39 percent plan to provide more flexible work arrangements in 2008." One of the most popular flexible work arrangements is job-sharing, which is essentially the splitting of one full-time job between two people.

Where Great Workplaces Start recently sat down with Kelly Keefe, Manager of Training & Events at ERC to talk about job-sharing. Kelly discusses her situation at ERC, the benefits of job-sharing, and provides excellent advice for employees or employers considering job-sharing. (Click here to listen)

"What is job-sharing?"

Kelly: "In a nutshell, it's taking one job and dividing it into two, and allowing two people to fulfill the duties of one job. In our job sharing in my role, I work two days and my counterpart works three days."

"What are some of the difficulties?"

Kelly: "If you don't really think through ahead of time how the job is going to be divided there could be some overlap, which could possibly lead to some communication problems."

"Do you have any advice for people that are considering job-sharing?"

Kelly: "The first step would be to evaluate the current position, and really think through whether that position could be divided, and would it still be a successful position with two people. The second step would be to go to your HR department and see if they would consider it. Make sure that you have all your questions answered that management might be interested to know."

Here are some examples of empowerment, whereby you can authorize the front-line employees to:

1. Waive or reduce of charges or penalties.
2. Give discount coupons.
3. Give gift certificates.
4. Correct the data supplied by the customer, instead of send the papers to and fro.
5. Refund cash to the customer for goods returned.
6. Taking a decision on if a problem comes under warranty or not and committing the repair work.

This empowerment comes along with a smart over-seeing and review mechanism:

1. Policies on the authorization and approval matrix for front-line employees: You cannot have limitless empowerment to the front-line employees (or for that matter any organizational level).
2. Business Rules and guidelines on using or applying the empowerment: Organization should clearly define the guidelines under-which the decisions can be taken.
3. A post-facto review of the decisions taken by front-line staff can evolve the empowerment mechanism. You can decide on where you can tighten or liberalize the controls.

It is a question of management mind-set

With all the controls and review mechanisms, finally it is a question of management mind-set in terms of how much they trust the frontline staff judgment. These are some of the assumption you can make, to build that mind-set:

1. People act responsibly, when they are trusted: People like to be trusted, and they are keen to justify the trust posed in them. If in doubt, they will check with their seniors.
2. People are competent, given the right support mechanism: If you have laid down the guidelines and business rules, people will generally adhere to them. The knowledge and decision rules used by more senior levels to make a decision can be mostly documented, for the frontline staff to follow.
3. The benefit of empowerment far exceeds the risk: Some wrong decisions by the empowered frontline staff can be easily compensated by the time and effort saving for the customer as well as the organization.
4. Empowerment is not a onetime short-lived experiment: Organizations which withdraw the empowerment on the first few instances of wrong decisions by frontline staff will have a short-term perspective. Any empowerment will take time to evolve and stabilize.
5. Don’t go too granular in empowerment: When you empower an individual, he should feel truly empowered. A small magnitude empowerment, does not work as it may help serve a minor proportion of your customers. The frontline staff may also feel short-changed. If you have to empower, do it well.

Supporting the Frontline Employees

Along with empowerment, comes the support mechanism to enable frontline staff to apply that empowerment.

1. A centralized FAQ section, frequently asked questions with appropriate responses, standard response letters or actual scripts to reinforce training and prompt the employee.
2. A centrally, online available business rules, guidelines and procedures.
3. Online support from experts- In case the frontline staff face technical issues, he or she should be able to contact by mail or by telephone, a panel of experts to take advice and recommendations.
4. User-friendly screens equipped with standardized formats to assist the customer service process.
5. Training on managing situations and decision-points.

Side Benefits of Empowering Front

1. Building overall leadership competencies in frontline staff: With empowerment, comes a greater decision making and sense of ownership. This develops leadership maturity within the frontline staff.
2. Reduce the management overhead: the next level management can focus on more important and value-add activities.
3. Feedback from frontline staff: With greater empowerment, the frontline staff becomes more sensitive to the customer needs and issues. This generates valuable feedback and insights.

You can refer customer service and support for some more subject matter expertise.

Initiative, creativity and passion are gifts.

They are benefactions that employees choose, day by day and moment by moment, to give or withhold.

They cannot be commanded.

Gary Hamel – The Future of Management

Nor can they be bought.

You can’t get these gifts from employees by challenging them to work harder.

Nor by exhorting them to 'beat the competition' or 'care for the customers'.

You will only get these gifts from employees when you give them a purpose that merits their best.

A critical assessment of the current market suggests that things have improved.  Most people acknowledge that performance management extends beyond budgeting to strategy management, profitability management and other performance considerations outside of finance.   Most planning products support financial, headcount, and other forms of operational planning.  Unfortunately, outcome-based budgeting is still rare and many organizations still don’t tie planning and strategy.

In "How chief strategy officers think about their role" in The McKinsey Quarterly, Dan Simpson, vice president, office of the chairman, at Clorox and the head of strategy and planning for 16 years echoes my sentiment:

People commonly confuse strategy and planning. Planning is primarily internal resource allocation and budgeting, which is clearly tied to finance.  Resource allocation has to be tied to strategy but isn’t strategy in and of itself.  Strategy should be focused on the marketplace and on customers and consumers.

One way to remove this confusion would be to use the phrase ‘resource allocation’, rather than planning, but I suspect that this change is impractical.    Dan suggests another way:

At Clorox, we try to separate those conversations.  One of the things we’ve done in the past is to bar financial components and exhibits from the first rounds of strategy meetings.  That way, the conversation focuses on market competitiveness, rather than on internal resource allocation.

I like this idea insofar it makes sure that financial issues don’t bog down strategy development too early in the process. However, I’m not sure it goes far enough.  How do we ensure that financial plans are explicitly tied to our objectives?  Outcome-based budgeting seems a natural answer but, other than in public sector, it seems to have limited popularity. Software vendors are starting to tie strategy management products with planning products but that only supports the concept, rather than enforcing it.

Anyone have any good ideas on how to ensure budgets are tied to strategy?

However most of us choose an employer based on ‘right brain’ criteria in pursuit of ‘right brain’ goals.

• Will the work be fulfilling?
• Will I part of a great team?
• Will my efforts help to make the world a better place?
• Will the job give me a lifestyle that works for me?

It is the ‘right brain’ that is the seat of creativity, imagination, innovation and passion. Unless we build a social system that feeds, stimulates and enables right brain contributions we should continue to expect as many as 1 in 4 of our employees to be looking to leave in the next 12 months, while 2 of the remaining three will be in survival (‘count the years, months and days until I retire’) mode.

Take a quick audit of your social system (meetings, processes and procedures) at work. How many opportunities in the average week are there for meaningful ‘right brain’ conversations that are likely to lead to the successful pursuit of right brain goals?

Of course it is easy for our left brains to rationalise away this paucity of ‘right brain’ opportunity in the name of efficiency and the pursuit of effectiveness. To overcome this tendency just remind your left brain of the critical importance of enabling good people to do great work, and of the need for frequent and regular innovation and renewal, if your organisation is to survive never mind thrive in the next few years.

You may find that it gives your right brain just enough time and space to do some big picture thinking.

Once you’ve designed your master plan, you can launch a series of initiatives aimed at achieving your goals.... The thing that really stops innovation is risk. CEOs can be terrified of organizational disruption because it can put at risk a company’s ability to meet quarterly earnings, which in turn is often what causes CEOs to lose their jobs. So part of what you need is a bridge so that they can be innovative but also keep their jobs.

The addition of program and project portfolio standards to the PMI standards inventory has been welcome.  The PM community needs to master these disciplines in order to drive good practices like the stage gate approach Bryan outlines below:

[S]tage-gate your investments in organizational innovation, [so] you can first learn what works and then scale it, without taking excessive risk.  None of us are smart enough to see in advance the ultimate answer, because the real answer lies in discovering the operating detail to make new ideas work in practice.  You can see the broad directions, but you... can’t even understand the secondary and third-level consequences of the design decisions you make. Those have to be discovered through trial and error.

Now it is very uncommon to come across learned professionals talking about 360 degree evaluation mechanism as the way to go “once an organization reaches maturity” as they would say.

For non HR professionals like me, it’s something that is really astonishing. This is a system I have seen been deployed by some of the most “mature” organizations who are seen as thought leaders in their respective verticals.

So 360 degree is a “open system” wherein one receives feedback on their performance against set goals from peers, subordinates and seniors. Unlike the evaluation been done by just your manager, everyone directly working with, gets an opportunity to impact and hence reducing any manager bias. The system in itself is very good and mature indeed…but for performance evaluation?

Shouldn’t performance by evaluated automatically by the databases and MIS instead of “opinions”. One can understand there are possibly measures for which numerical data does not exist (typically that is what MIS and databases support), but does that mean a Performance Management System that primarily runs on 360 degree.

How many times do you come across such quantifiable and established “beyond doubt” measures that do a merry round in a 360 degree environment for rating on a scale by multiple people. Some interesting real life examples are follows:

Objective: To achieve defined sales for Product X in the next 12 months

Objective: Ensure desired level of profitability

Objective: Collections of all debtors outstanding in time

What purpose does it achieve by having people give ratings on these when you don’t need any individual judgment really? At the end of the day manager will get feedback from 5-6 individuals with different ratings, he will then in all probabilities take the median and finalize the rating. My bet is in these “mature organizations” this final rating with then also go for normalization…..I guess its only god who knows if there is any sense in whatever comes out of this circus J

In the end what could have helped in measuring “some” qualitative measures and help largely in developmental needs, has become “the system” in several organizations.

~~Rohit~~

Ken Thompson's The Bumble Bee blog at bioteams.com highlights two "tangents" identified by Dorner.  These are common leadership failure modes, largely because they are very tempting to pursue during a crisis.

We may resort to “horizontal flight,” pulling back into a small, cozy corner of reality where we feel at home … Or we may resort to “vertical flight,” kicking ourselves free of recalcitrant reality altogether and constructing a more cooperative image of that reality. Operating solely within out own minds, we no longer have to deal with reality but only with what we happen to think about it."

Read all of Ken's post here.  Note his great tips on how to deal with a "flying" leader.

HRchitect believes that a number of other factors will impact the evaluation, selection and implementation of ITM applications over the next 12-36 months. In this blog we will cover ITM Application Portfolios.

Firms will continue to try to rationalize their application portfolio by implementing ITM suites – One of the biggest challenges to the whole philosophy and approach of ITM has been the lack of a fully integrated set of supporting applications. Many firms have tried to implement a plethora of separate ITM offerings alongside a core HRMS platform, only to drown in a sea of application and process integration issues. In many respects, the rise of the talent management suite has been a market response to the desire of customers to kill as many functionality “birds” with as few application “stones” as possible. The siren song of integration continues to be sung, and with good reason -- integration continues to represent a major component of any successful implementation, and customer issues with maintaining integration between functional talent management suite components from different vendors are well-documented. For many organizations, the desired end state is a single integration point between the core HRMS platform and a completely integrated talent management suite.

Unfortunately, reality will often intrude on this wonderful concept throughout 2008 and beyond. Because the depth of functionality is rarely at the same level within the talent management suite applications, customers often are faced with a heavy price to pay for integrated capabilities (e.g., really good learning management, adequate performance management, rudimentary succession management and career planning). Many (especially Global 2000 firms) are not yet willing to settle for the level of missing feature/function in critical ITM areas in exchange for integration. Therefore, we still see firms purchasing an average of one to two components from a given vendor throughout 2008; however, as vendors continue to fill in the gaps in their functional portfolio, we expect that average to rise in the next few years.

Solving a piece of the puzzle… 
Matt Lafata, HRchitect

• Who does what? – task conflicts
• How do we get this done? – process conflicts
• Who gets what? – resource conflicts

Failure to anticipate, recognise and resolve these conflicts leads to the most dangerous conflicts of all – personal conflicts.

Two people in conflict can usually both make a plausible case for their position. You can of course handle these conflicts just by issuing a decree. However the value of a high performing team, and the measure of your ability to manage it is in getting a decision that has allowed everyone to have their say, for pros and cons to be fully explored and for commitment to making the decision work to be built.

Handled like this, conflicts become powerful team building tools as people start to recognise that the group can make better decisions than any one individual and that no one person has all the information required to make the best decision.

To create sustainable increasing shareholder value can only really be achieved by managing the business performance on an ongoing basis. It requires a strategic approach to identify the functions required in the business to consistently deliver the desired business outputs that will in turn increase the value of the business. It requires the identification of the business critical outputs of each function and the subsequent continuous monitoring of those outputs. It is business performance management that ensures sustainable increase in shareholder value of an organisation.

There are 6 business value drivers identified by Jack Alexander in his book Performance Dashboards and Analysis for Value Creation that are under management's control to influence.

• Sales Growth
• Relative Pricing Strength
• Operating Effectiveness
• Capital Management
• Cost of Capital
• Intangibles, Credibility, Future Expectations

These business value drivers can be influenced through a pro-active performance management approach. Improving the business performance can be achieved through a number of mechanisms both hard and soft in the organisation. Business processes are one of the tangible mechanisms that can easily be addressed to impact business performance. Pro-active process management impact most of the value drivers in a direct fashion. It can influence sales growth, drive and manage operating effectiveness, assist with capital management and manage intangibles.

Business Process Management is the one business methodology that can have a significant impact on business performance and value. I will address the concept of effective performance management through business process management in future posts.

What is clear from the study Keith cites is that the motivation and performance of less-skilled team members (or IGM for "inferior group members") improves when mixed in with superior performers.  The post's comments are excellent, and Keith explains the why IGM motivation would increase in his comment:

There are two possible reasons why IGM motivation could increase in mixed groups: one is “upward social comparison,” the IGMs adjust their performance upward... the flip side of this is that the superior GMs would then be expected to adjust their performance downward.... The authors of this article note this too: “One frequent concern is that motivation gains of IGMs might come at the price of motivation losses by superior group members so that the overall gain for the group outcome might be nullified.”

The second reason is “social indispensability,” the IGM motivation goes up if they know their contribution is critical to the group product. But if the IGM senses that their contribution is NOT indispensable, their motivation goes down. That happens when, for example, the group’s performance is determined by the strongest individual performance, or when a poor performance by one member can be compensated for by another.

To help along this path, there is a great new tool called ididwork.  In this free service, you can keep a running log of the work you accomplish, tagging each entry to a category.  Then you can analyze those categories (by number of entries, not by time spent accomplishing each) to see where your accomplishments lie.  Here is a graph showing my recent work and how it breaks down into categories.

The service also allows you to get managerial feedback on the work, if you want, and you can subscribe to the feeds of other people's work in a team environment.  This might just replace the performance review systems of smaller companies, or those wishing to be more nimble in their approach (more frequent reviews of smaller goals and activities). 

I could see using something like this at Remarkable Tributes.  I will probably continue to play with it to see if it is useful as a personal productivity tool.

Effective managers recognise their role in developing both the hard and soft landscapes of the social system – but recognise that it is the soft landscape – the way people and teams work together that really drives culture and performance.

When trying to initiate change, less effective managers work on the hard landscape. They change the organisational structure, replace key people or alter what is measured and rewarded. While such changes maybe necessary, they are NEVER sufficient.

It is the interactions between people that need to be changed, the information flows and the decision making processes. If people are not having the right discussions or behaving in ways that drive values and performance then the managers’ job is to influence them to adopt different ‘value creating’ behaviours.

In most cases this can be done using feedback. In other cases it may require more concerted efforts at coaching for the desired behaviours.

Recognising and shaping the behaviours that drive values and performance is the hallmark of an outstanding manager.

The social system changes and enables the organisation to perform consistently well because managers use mechanisms that ensure that the right conversations happen consistently and frequently. These conversations improve the quality of decision making and encourage behaviours in people’s every day work to accomplish the elusive goal of culture change.

A second class of formal escalation drivers involve issues that cause a "substantial negative business impact" -- severe performance issues, functional gaps, implementation or operational issues. Again, these are usually dramatic and clearly topics that require formal escalation.

More tricky are less-defined issues like legal, compensation, public relations, or security problems.  Many project managers aren't aware of these issues, especially if they're caught up in issue solving.  Security escalations are particularly pernicious.  The most damaging breaches don't interfere with system function...because, of course, they're making the solution function "too well" for the wrong folks.

Informal escalation skills are hard to define generically.  My experience is that the most effective techniques are organization-dependent.  One example: many customers think it is best for SAP resources to enter support tickets to SAP.  Nope, not in my experience.  Our support and development colleagues want to hear from the customer directly!

We suggest that the customer enter the ticket, then the SAP colleague on-site follows up.  In fact, one of the first things I do with a new customer is to ensure they know how to use our support resources.

I wondered how Theo would discuss what was, in essence, the termination of his top performer.  There is a lot to admire about his management style.  He's not even 35, yet Theo is one of the more self-possessed, articulate, mature, and successful sport executives around.   Let me pass along a few "Theo's do's and don'ts" that I derived from the interview:

• Don't bad mouth past contributions -- This makes one look bitter and foolish.  For goodness sakes, Manny averaged nearly 40 HR/110 RBI in a Red Sox uniform.
• Do answer specific objections/questions with facts -- That said, don't let objections lie.  However, answer the objections with facts.  When Theo was asked about the secondary effects of losing Manny on David Ortiz, Theo could easily demonstrate that Ortiz's production was unaffected by Manny's previous absences.
• Don't, in the words of Theo, "parade around and tell people what's going on behind the scenes, just to make ourselves look good".  Too many sports leaders get caught up in trying to ensure everyone -- fans, the media, and especially the players -- knows that "they're the boss". 
• Do keep "senior leaders" in the loop, even asking their advice when needed -- When it does get serious enough, sometimes you'll need to reach out to the team itself.  Apparently Theo and others quietly reached out to veteran players to see if things were really different with this "Manny being Manny" episode.
• Don't minimize the breach -- All one has to do is be clear that things were different this time...respecting the first "don't".  No need to be graphic about the issues, but be as clear as possible that something has changed.
• Do admit what could have been done better on one's side -- Again, an easy good will gesture to admit the obvious; the Red Sox could have handled the saga of Manny better at times.

Finally, do have some perspective.  Theo, with wry and dry humor, said he slept well after trading Manny (as opposed to his famous insomnia after his 2004 trade of another famous player, Nomar Garciaparra).  As Theo said, "We hadn't won two World Series when we traded Nomar, had we"?

I am similarly noticing a real reluctance in organisations to say sorry. Sorry for messing up. Sorry our processes did not produce an outcome that meets your expectations. For providing faulty goods.

Here are some examples.

• When running a workshop at a local venue, I had ordered vegetarian as well as non-vegetarian food. We checked prior to the day, and again as we arrived at the venue. The vegetarian food did not arrive. The venue's staff member spent a half hour finding the documentation to prove to me that it had been ordered, rather than fixing the problem and getting us the right food.
• An optometrist, although given three times as long as the quoted time to provide glasses, was not able to provide them before I left on a 5 week overseas holiday. I had to leave without the prescription glasses, which were necessary for the holiday. The optometrist never apologised for the delay or their mistakes. When I raised the difficulties with him later, after the holiday, he brushed me off.
• A local telecommunications company treated us unethically and illegally for 18 months. They made contact with me only after 15 months when legal action was threatened through the ombudsman. The senior management of this company refused to apologise and it was left to a more junior staff member to provide an apology. It was not sufficient.
• I returned a feedback form after having my car serviced. The feedback form had been sent to me by the company that serviced my car. I had not been entirely satisfied and described this on the form. They did not contact me to discuss this further or to apologise for the mistakes.
• An insurance broker made mistakes in establishing my car insurance, leaving my car uninsured for several days. They did not contact me to talk it through. All their contact was through email.

Most of these organisations have lost or will lose my business. It is not because they made a mistake, but because of their reluctance to discuss the issues with me and to make changes so that the mistakes will not happen again. How can I be assured that it won't happen again?

Does your organisation say sorry? Do you say sorry?

An apology puts the past behind and allows both parties to move on. This is particularly important to the client, customer or staff member, each of whom will have a long memory of the difficulties encountered - much longer than the organisation or manager will remember any incident. Apologies build trust.

Customers don't necessarily talk to others about good service, but will tell 7 - 10 people about bad service, poor products or mishandling.  A genuine apology overcomes bad feelings and goes a long way to retaining customers and building goodwill.

Your staff will also appreciate an apology when it is due. An apology will rebuild broken relationships and strengthen your reputation as a leader and manager.

Sorry is such a small word. Why is it so difficult to say?

Can we help?

If you would like assistance with customer service, give us a call.

Indra Process and Performance Consulting
www.indraconsulting.com

All articles that appear on Indra Process and Performance Consulting’s blog are copyright Indra Process and Performance Consulting 2008.

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• Intrapreneurship works wonders for Gen X-ers so inclined. I have several very bright colleagues in my group who just aren't happy being "grinders". In other words, they're keen on creating and innovating a new process, product, etc., but they want to move on to the next "start-up". Many would leave or become less productive if they didn't get a chance to cut their teeth anew.
• Successful corporate X-ers seem to know themselves well.  I've used some of the personality inventories -- MBTI, True Colors, etc. -- to at least start the conversation about to work effectively among diverse colleagues. This approach often unlocks a great strength of the generation -- flexibility -- which is critical for my group, which works across time zones, cultures, functions, etc.

I have at least sympathy, if not empathy, for Gen-X's corporate struggles.  By traditional demography, I'm a Boomer (born 1961); however, culturally and psychologically I relate much more to Gen-X.  Which, of course, makes sense considering my cohort was what Douglas Coupland was writing about.  Besides, can someone who was age eight for Woodstock really be much of Boomer?

What doesn't work is trying to slavishly follow the path of the Boomers. I've seen too many 30-40 somethings saying things like "I want to be at position 'X' by the time I am age 'Y'..."  Given the demographic constraints at the top -- at least today -- this approach has rarely led to satisfying work or life outcomes.

Since people misunderstand strategy management, they often equate performance management to better budgeting and planning.  The confusion is rampant and, until recently, was exacerbated by the market analysts.  Some firms, notably Ventana Research, have encouraged the use of strategy management for several years.  However IDC helped the industry take a huge step forward by using the term “Financial Planning and Strategy Management (FPSM)” to refer to the category and including strategy management in their market sizing.  But I was particularly pleased to see Gartner emphasize strategy management in this year’s preparation for the magic quadrant.  An abbreviated version of their description is as follows:

Strategy management applications provide a packaged approach to support strategic planning, modeling and monitoring to improve corporate performance, accelerate management decision making and facilitate collaboration. These solutions are usually tied to strategy maps or methodologies, such as the balanced scorecard. Strategy management comprises:

·         Strategic planning

·         Initiative/goal management

·         Scorecards and strategy maps

·         Dashboards (or cockpits)

 

CPM suites should at the very least provide dashboard capabilities to help display performance information in a way that is easily understood by users. However, more sophisticated organizations are implementing strategy maps (linked frameworks of KPIs) using scorecard software to link CPM to other aspects of performance management. Strategy Management is therefore becoming an increasingly important aspect of CPM suites [emphasis added].

I can certainly still quibble with their definition, as I think they are missing the fact that strategy management is not just about helping organizations develop the strategy and make better decisions based on the strategy but also for every employee to better understand the strategy and how they can impact it.  In particular, without sophisticated techniques for cascading strategy has the tendency to be trapped in the executive suite.  But the point is that Gartner, and many others, have begun to realize the importance of strategy management in improving an organization’s performance.

I don’t want to be guilty of irrational exuberance but maybe I’ll never have to write another post complaining that the market isn’t changing.

Of course, be prepared to have the "bad news" conversation with facts, figures, etc.  Use the following tips to be honest... tactfully!

Never simply say “Never” or “Can't”

• Gut reactions are not accepted without evidence
• Some bosses then set out to prove that it can be done
• Investigate all of the angles, present the information, THEN make the decision

Don't point fingers -- YES: We have a problem, NO: These guys screwed up

Do NOT go around your manager -- If you have to escalate beyond him/her, say so!

Maintain Emotional Balance -- Understand your reasons for the meeting; if you are upset, anxious, etc., talk to a surrogate first!

Use non-threatening questions to raise difficult issues -- YES: “What are the implications if we do/don’t do X?”; NO: “Won’t senior management want us to do X?”

Navigating office politics -- Slow down...Stay positive...Know when to fold ‘em, one can't always win!

Knowing that you need to place greater emphasis on productivity is not the same as knowing exactly which productivity practices are most effective. The five factors that have the biggest impact on productivity according to a recent survey by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (I4CP) are:

• corporate culture,
• leadership,
• compensation and benefit programs,
• training and development, and
• performance management.

These represent the collective and, perhaps, conventional wisdom on how best to boost productivity.

I4CP then analysed their data to discover the primary differences between average and highly productive companies. The analysis found that the most productive organisations really outstripped the average ones in several areas, including:

• The culture of the organization
• Leadership
• Employee engagement practices

Seventy-nine percent of the most productive organizations say that, to a high or very high degree, the cultures of their organizations help raise employee productivity. Training managers to build a performance culture would seem to be a sensible option.

Seventy-six percent of highly productive companies said that, to a high or very high extent, leadership in their companies raises productivity. Programs that teach managers how to boost productivity among their direct reports would also seem to be an excellent tactic.

59% of highly productive organizations said they use systematic processes to engage employees. Engagement means that workers are mentally and emotionally invested in their work and in contributing to their employer's success. Such employees are usually satisfied with their work and speak positively about their employers. Which is why cracking the whip and exhorting employees to work harder or longer is unlikely to be a good productivity strategy over the long term.

Another difference between highly productive and average organizations is in how they tend to measure productivity. The I4CP survey asked about the various ways in which they gauge productivity and found that the most widely utilized metric was:

• output per work group, followed by
• revenue per employee,
• output per person,
• output per hour and
• profits per employee.

Highly productive organizations were not only more likely to use most productivity measures of all types, they tended to place nearly the same emphasis on output per person as they did on output per work group. Now the I4CP only surveyed for profit organisations - but my take would be that the use of similar hard performance measures in a well designed performance management system would have the same impact in the social sector.

These findings suggest two possibilities:

1. that applying such metrics leads to higher productivity levels because what gets measured gets done, and
2. that organizations should look at both individual and group productivity metrics if they want to have success in this area.

The I4CP study shows that organizations are placing greater emphasis on productivity in today's challenging times.

It also suggests that organisations that want to boost productivity should consider doing more to measure and track productivity as well as focus on specific organisational factors, including culture, leadership, employee engagement and, health and wellness initiatives.

You can read the original article on the I4CP website here.

Many PMs unintentionally reinforce this view by trying to get everyone to pay attention to the work they do produce: the meta work of spreadsheets, specifications, presentations and status reports, failing to realize that to most in any organization, these are the least interesting and most bureaucratic things produced in the building. This mismatch of value sends the PM and his/her team into a downward spiral: the PM asking for more and more respect in ways guaranteed to push people further away.

I've hammered on this point again and again, but when you're focused on "work vs. outcomes", you're consciously or unconsciously telling others that you're not a business leader, you're a technician.  Mastering your project's business case and its elevator speech -- and using it to describe your project instead of the issues log -- will enhance your personal brand immensely.  As Scott notes:

Our culture does not think of movie directors, executive chefs, astronauts, brain surgeons, or rock stars as project managers.... The difference is these individuals would never describe themselves primarily as project managers. They’d describe themselves as directors, architects or rock stars first, and as a projects manager or team leaders second. They are committed first to the output, not the process.