Measurement vs Management

Modern Leadership: Let's Rethink Performance Management

Leaders are frequently faced with two oppositional goals: measuring performance and driving higher engagement in a single process — Performance Management. Though both goals share the same ingredients being employees, they require a different recipe.

Performance measurement feeds data for talent decisions, but it does not and cannot inherently improve performance. Just like taking your temperature when you have a fever — it doesn't actually cure the fever, but just tells you about it.

That said, merely monitoring performance doesn't inherently lead to improvement. Real leadership separates these aims and draws up two distinct plans to pursue each.

Systems Overbuilt, Underperform

An effort to quantify every facet of employee output has made performance management processes so complex. Goals, job descriptions and predefined competencies have traditionally been the tools for this type of measurement. This process takes for granted stability, assuming that work is consistent over time. The trouble, though is that roles change at a rapid pace in the current landscape and objectives are becoming outdated almost as soon they have been conceived. Not all work can be broken down along such tidy goal-oriented lines — in many cases workers provide intangible benefit that is hard to measure.

Assuming a generic competency model fits everyone creates an unnatural expectation and asks employees to fill in a mold that might not be the right fit for every individual. When you make the model standardized, it invalidates all of these individual strengths that each person is able to bring to the table. Good leadership would note these dynamics and adjust performance measurements in real-time to better reflect the individual strengths.

A Leadership-Driven Shift

Performance management leaders today can offer a new way of managing performance based on more agile, tailored feedback processes. Instead of enforcing antiquated measures we can also challenge the binary and move to an enablement promoting system that inspires employees, nurtures talent and encourages individual contributions. Leaders can thereby both assess performance and inspire acts of excellence through the acknowledgment that work is changing and through respect for individual differences within their organization.

#leadership #performane