Performance
Management - Why Doesn't It Work...
is part of
our Public Sector Manager White Paper Series. The series is designed to
explore issues of interest to public sector managers in a short, concise,
and thought provoking way. However even if you aren't in the public sector, you will find this particular book thought-provoking since it deals with why most performance management and appraisal systems fail and cost more than they return. Designed as a "quick read" (about 58 pages),
it presents an overview of the use of performance management and employee
appraisal, identifies reasons why many such systems don't add value to
the organization, and offers some alternatives to traditional methods.
Price $24.95.
To
order, go to order form link
What's
Inside - Table of Contents
Forward
- Introduction (click to read)
Chapter
1 - Traditional Performance Management - The Theory (click to read)
-
Overview
-
What Is Performance Management
Supposed To Accomplish?
-
What Does Performance Management
Assume About Organizations & Performance?
-
Is There A Downside To Performance
Management?
Chapter 2 - Performance Management
- The Practice
-
Frequency of Planning &
Review
-
On Executive and Management
Performance Management
-
Managers On Appraisal
-
Employees On Appraisal
-
On Training & Career
Development
-
On Participation & Goal
Setting
-
Assessment of Performance
Management In Practice
-
Why Does Performance Management
Fail? Summary
Chapter 3 - The New High
Performance Organization
-
Introduction
-
The New High Performance
Organization
-
Conclusion
Chapter 4 - The Effectiveness
Enhancement System
-
Introduction
-
Establishing Requirements
-
What Effectiveness Enhancement
Is NOT!
-
Summary
-
Effectiveness Enhancement
System Requirements Summary Sheet
Chapter 5 - Enter The Customer
- Designing Your System
-
Introduction
-
Step 1 - Defining Your Customers
-
Step 2 - Defining Your Own
Needs As A Customer
-
Step 3 - Identifying What
Your Supervisors Need
-
Step 4 - Identifying Needs
of Employees
-
Step 5 - Bringing It All
Together
-
Step 6 - Consider Other Players
-
Step 7 - Do It!
Summary
Chapter 6 - Innovative
Ideas
-
Introduction
-
"Using Your Head" System
-
Bi-Directional Enhancement
-
Quality Service Guidelines
Model
-
The Group Appraisal Model
Epilogue - Some Reflective
Comments
Book
Introduction
Following is the Introduction
for our White Paper entitled Performance Management-Why Doesn't It Work.
Price is $25.95 +$6.00 shipping. The book is approximately 60 pages.
Introduction To This White
Paper
This is the second in
a series of Public Sector Manager White Papers, and is designed to help
managers develop their knowledge and understanding of topics important
to public sector management success.
Our topic this time is
performance management. We must tell you up front that this is not a step-by-step
guide to making performance management work in your workplace. Our experience
has been that a step-by-step, lock-stepped approach fails more often than
not.
What you are going to
find in this White Paper is a challenge to conventional thinking about
performance management. While it would have been far simpler to have written
a conventional guide about performance management, this would only have
amounted to supporting a process that has failed organizations, managers,
and employees. More important, my own experience and those of managers
and employees would have been ignored.
Background
Since we are going to
discuss issues that may contradict traditional ideas on the topic, it is
important that you understand what amounts to a seven year journey that
has shaped my thoughts on the matter.
When I joined the Civil
Service Commission of Manitoba as a design consultant, my first task was
to re-write a course called Setting Standards of Performance. This course
was part of a series of courses designed to help managers implement performance
management. I laboured at this task for some time, researching, and talking
to people to become acquainted with the principles of performance management.
In the end I managed to re-write the course to address some training concerns
and to make it more "friendly". Then, I went out to teach it.
When I sat in my office,
doing the re-design, everything made sense to me, since above all, performance
management is a logical, rational process. However, when I had to teach
it to others I found that there were often times when I could not deal
with specific questions posed by attendees. I was grateful when another
trainer took over responsibility for the training. He, at least, seemed
to be much better at phrasing those thorny standards of performance. I
assumed that my inexperience was the source of my difficulty. I was never
sure.
The provincial government
had developed a performance management policy, and an ill-fated manual
that eventually found its way into the dungeons of the Department of Finance.
The Civil Service Commission had trained hundreds, probably thousands of
managers and supervisors in performance management.
But everywhere I turned,
I heard the sounds of failure. In one of my courses, I asked participants
how many had had a performance review within the past year. Three people
raised their hands. Sixteen sat immobile and one said "What's that?" In
my organization consulting role, I would, on occasion have to ask a manager
about their performance management system. More often than not, the manager
would respond that such a system was in place. When asked about the details
it was apparent that the system wasn't used. Sometimes a manager would
admit there wasn't one at all and "we need to get one sometime".
That matched my own experience
as an employee. Working for three different directors, across six years,
I had two performance reviews, and one was conducted by the ADM (don't
ask).
It was obvious that something
was wrong, but what? I knew that I was seeing almost no indication that
performance management was alive and well, despite investment of training
and the development of a government wide policy REQUIRING it.
I worked on a consulting
project to design a department wide performance management system, and
while this helped bring some issues to the fore, it provided no answers,
only more questions.
It has only been recently
that some of the pieces have fallen into place. I don't claim to have all
the answers, but I think I know some of them. I only was able to uncover
some of the issues through contact with ideas that helped me put performance
management into a wider organization context. Work by Crosby, Deming, Rosabeth
Moss Kantor, Tom Peters and Bob Waterman helped to supply the raw material
for what you are about to read.
A Preview
From my experience and
those of other managers and employees, I noticed the following:
-
Generally, managers and employees
don't really like performance management.
-
Managers don't do it regularly
-
Paradoxically, many who didn't
like it or do it thought that it was a great idea in principle (but they
still didn't do it).
-
I could find no relation
between the use of performance management and organizational success. Use
of traditional performance management did not guarantee success, and some
organizations that didn't have much of it at all seemed just fine.
I concluded that:
-
There must be something wrong
with the concepts underlying performance management.
-
Traditional performance management
no longer fits what we might call the new vision of the effective organization.
People see it as irrelevant, or rarely helpful.
-
It is impossible to find
a formula for performance management that will work each and every time.
When performance management works, it is a result of highly developed management
and inter-personal skills, not the system.
-
In many settings traditional
performance management is a waste of time.
-
There must be a better way.
This White Paper is a result
of seven years of personal confusion about the issues. I think you will
some of it startling. I hope that you take on the challenge of confronting
your own "traditional" ways of thinking about performance management, and
that you can use this as an opportunity to design alternate management
tools to do what traditional performance management is supposed to do.
Robert Bacal
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