I have been a reasonably successful manager over the last few years (or at least my LinkedIn recommendations seem to say this) but have often been seen by my peers as not being on the same page as they are. Normally I wouldn’t use this type of management language but in this instance it actually works.
The difference in view comes down to the way that I manage people. I happen to think that most Performance Management is just there as an expensive self serving distraction and doesn’t help anyone fulfil their job role. Some performance management tends to dictate that you set objectives over and above the job role but why is this? If someone is looking for a promotion then fair enough they may seek training and experience to help them achieve this but what if you enjoy the role you’re doing and have no ambition to change grades. I know as a manager that piling stretch objectives on the latter will only introduce stress which will impact on their ability to do the job and more importantly on the way that they feel doing the job. So in effect then I took the approach to manage people as individuals and not as points on a bell-curve. Oddly enough most of my peers seemed to think that this was the wrong approach and went off to raise the performance bar and manage people out who dropped off the end of the scale.
From my point of view it is crucial to have a variety of skills and capabilities in a team and having all the same type of personality in the same group doesn’t work well at all. As an aside, this is why a lot of senior management teams and boards are particularly ineffective. I would include most politicians here as well. Typical performance management tends to promote behaviours of a couple of personality types over above the rest of the team, which potentially has a negative impact by dis-enfranchising those people with other traits. These people often do a fantastic job but are not married to the company, and they also don’t see that performing their role has any similarity with the dedication and focus of olympic athletes. For me everyone is an individual and their needs change on a daily basis so the trick of good management is to recognise this and have some empathy with your team whilst delivering value within your business. I don’t think a rigid performance management structure takes individuality into account and often removes the manager from their team by enforcement of compulsory one to one meetings at set times. A manager should be aware of a team members performance at all times and be dealing with issues as they arise and not once every six months or so.
The constant need to improve performance also goes against what people are really about. So Usain Bolt can run really fast and has broken record after record but we seem to use his talents as a view that people can do anything, and that everything is indeed possible. In theory we can probably do anything if we set our minds to it, but as an example I am a pretty dire guitar player, and acknowledge that even with practicing 8 hours a day I wouldn’t be able to challenge Jimmy Page. A friend of mine who’s an NLP coach reckons that I can achieve such six string virtuosity but he also hasn’t factored in external matters such as the need to earn money for food and shelter and of course the need to do the ironing. In the work environment we seem to be setting stretch objectives and optimising employees based on the ‘Can Do’ culture whilst ignoring environmental factors and more importantly the fact they we are all individuals with different motivators. I believe that we make too many assumptions around behaviours of team members and this really does impact the success of the organisation.
Just for the record I haven’t always thought this way. Some years back I was programme managing a set of projects to bring together three businesses and there was a very tight deadline. Getting caught up in the culture of the organisation I pushed the team and myself extremely hard and we got the job done. However, at the end of the programme I managed to collapse with exhaustion but what hit me hardest was that I had pushed a member of the team well past their limits. In fact the person involved was so stressed he developed a heart condition and the phone conversation with his partner blaming me personally for his condition was uncomfortable to say the least. It is something I would never ever want to repeat so if I get asked to do the impossible now I will always respond with what’s possible. It’s Ok sometimes to drive fast when appropriate but you do need to know when and where to use the brakes.
Tags: Business, Management, performance management, Work Practices
