Making performance management work
Dream Realisation
Many careers fail due to different understanding of goals and expectations
Every organisation today is paying more and more attention to performance management as a powerful tool for unleashing the potential of its employees. Performance planning is one very important phase in performance management life cycle in any organisation. Here are some tips to make performance planning phase work for you to realise your career dreams:
* Use it to clarify expectations and goals: Use performance management to clarify expectations and goals very clearly from your supervisor. This is the most important objective of any performance management system. During performance planning, the supervisor is expected to have discussions with his reportee and clarify this aspect.
In fact, in many organisations, it is used to mutually arrive at expectations and goals from the role which a reportee is playing or expected to play. Many careers fail due to different understanding of goals and expectations between manager and reportee and if mutual understanding is achieved, half the work is already done.
* Do not insist only on a quantitative measurement criteria: All work done by you can not be quantified and hence, if you and your supervisor insist only on having a quantitative measurement criteria, a major chunk of your work and result may not be assessed or may get under-assessed. That may not be good news for you. A manager is supposed to make assessments in the organisation and nurture talent and select the right people.
This is an ongoing assessment and does not rely only on data but also relies on various non-quantitative aspects including feedback. Until a manager does not make an assessment under the influence of prejudice, personal liking, preference, emotion andso on, it may be more or less an unbiased assessment, though not perfect. Hence, it is important to make sure that all important goals and results expected from your role are captured in your performance plan whether they can be quantitatively measured or not. Qualitative assessment from your supervisor, customers among others can be acceptable for those goals and results.
* Understanding of performance standard: Make sure that you use performance planning time to understand performance standard. This becomes more important if your organisation uses relative performance management system. Performance standard means that what level or kind of performance has received what level of assessment in past. Once this is known to you and may be also embedded in your performance plan, then looking at your past performance and current capability, you may be able to do gap analysis and work out your work and capability improvement plan which can help you achieve your desired performance level.
* Understand your development and improvement areas: It is very important to look at development and improvement areas from others perspective and your supervisor is one of the best persons to provide you with that perspective. We are blind many times to our shortcomings and may not be able to identify finer or subtler aspects of development and improvement.
In fact, this is why we look for coaches many times. We can discuss with our supervisor what capability aspects (skills, knowledge, attitude, etc) need further improvement to make you more successful in your current work and can also discuss what capability you need to further develop for next level role.
* Understand value orientation of organisation and expectation: Any organisation looks for people at higher level and for increased responsibilities, those individuals who demonstrate excellent business results and value orientation in alignment with organisation values.
You can use performance planning time to get more clarity on organisation values and specific expectation on each from you. Putting efforts in that direction will take you a long way in preparing you for taking higher and higher responsibilities in your organisation.
To summarise, performance planning is a very important phase to set the foundation for your enhanced performance and shaping career in the future. We do not leave it entirely in the hands of our supervisors and managers and in fact, take charge of it and take the initiative.
(The writer is Senior Vice President and Business Line Head (Central R&D) and Head (General Technology Division), Huawei)
