As I walked down memory lane, quite literally when I visited my college for a guest lecture, my footsteps took me to the library which was one of my favorite hangouts back then! My glance fell on a book “Its not how good you are, its how good you want to be”, by Paul Arden. As old habits die hard, I started to superimpose this idea on typical workplace performance management processes. Traditionally performance was measured to evaluate ‘how good an employee was’, but today aren’t we tending towards ‘how good we want him/her to be’? We talk about bringing the ‘Human’ back into HR and building trust, continuous feedback and engagement have become the stepping stones towards this. I picked up the book for a speed read and here are some excerpts with direct parallels one can draw with our performance management strategies focused on evolving in the future rather than on measuring the past.
“Do not seek praise. Seek criticism
………So, if you have produced a pleasantly acceptable piece of work you would have proved to yourself that it is good simply because others have said so…..If instead of seeking approval, you ask, ‘What is wrong with it? How can I make it better?’, you are more likely to get a truthful, critical answer. You may even get an improvement in your idea.”
Performance Management strategies are like this! I once had tried an experiment in my team of critical evaluation instead of appraisal and the results were remarkable! I asked the appraisee to write a few lines on ‘What could have been done better’ as part of self-appraisal. The expected noise of dissatisfaction of appraisals was replaced with team members setting higher goals for themselves. And here I had a team that was on the path of looking ahead and not looking back.
“Do not covet your ideas
You will remember from school other students preventing you from seeing their answers by placing their arm around their exercise book or exam paper. It is the same at work, people are secretive with their ideas…..The problem with hoarding is…..eventually you will become stale….If you give away everything….This forces you to look, to be aware, to replenish.”
This bears a striking resemblance to another strategy. Instead of recording Individual Development Plans (IDPs), it may be worthwhile drawing Peer Development Plans (PDPs) wherein every individual has to come up with an idea-sharing goal for the development of a co-worker. This yields two results, viz. each employee takes pride in his role and secondly by helping each other develop, you are seeding collaboration and reinforcing trust.
“Don’t wait…The one you have in hand is the opportunity
You’re probably working on a job or project right now and saying, let’s just deal with it and get it over with. We’ll make the next one good….Successful solutions are often made by people rebelling against bad briefs”.
Its time we discourage appraisees or appraisers from complaining about limitations of time and money in achieving project goals. Instead, a system that focusses on challenging the status quo is sure to be future proof. Driving a solutionist approach is a massive step towards forming revolutionary organizations. Appraisal systems could be fantastic levers towards this. One might get amazing insights from cross-functional teams on how they could improve performance in the next year. For example, your business development or proposals team could draw insights from the comments in the performance management system made by your quality assurance teams!
”Accentuate the positive. Eliminate the negative
Find out what’s right about your product or service and dramatize it, like a cartoonist exaggerates an action. For example, you know a horse can jump a ditch, therefore you accept it can jump the Grand Canyon”.
Just like the author says, this has really accelerated my career than anything else and I really mean it. This is one of my greatest professional secrets that I am now sharing. I always imagined myself several notches upward in my career ladder and tried shadow boarding. Believe me, it works! The risks one can take while working as a shadow are far less consequential than the ones you take after you have been assigned the role.
“Do not put cleverness before the communication
…..in order to justify salaries, people need to be seen to have clever ideas….Instead of trying to find a quick fix, if they were to spend time finding out what the problem was, they would discover the solution”.
Quite often we tend to ignore the consequences of short-term decisions and long-term solutions. While the former needs to be rewarded, the latter needs to be acknowledged and nurtured. Visionary ideas with farsight are the ones that could transform teams to transition from making incremental improvements to pathbreaking progress. Broadening of vision is a precursor to high performing teams and individuals as it develops the most essential skill of anticipating roadblocks and preparing to overcome them.
“What do you do when your client won’t buy.
Do it his way. Then do it in your way……Give him what he wants and he may well give you what you want”.
What can be better than this for client management! This is one of my favorites from the book when it comes to managing performance. Here is my twist in the tale. Just replace ‘client’ with ‘team member’ and see how this magic formula works. If you are able to give your team member what he/she wants by way of motivation, challenge, etc. rather than demanding just the deliverables, I am sure the team would perform and deliver more than what you would expect of them.
As I continued flipping through the book, I couldn’t resist this one…
“When it can’t be done, do it. If you don’t do it, it doesn’t exist. A new idea can be unfamiliar, silly or both”
This is enough food for thought on how a high-performance culture thrives on ideation and idea validation. This one is for the road indeed!
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