Performance management is crucial, especially in a time when people work from home. In this last blog of three, we will explain the four conditions necessary to be successful when implementing Performance Management.
Figure 1: Boundary conditions for effective performance management
A. Basic knowledge of Lean philosophy
To be able to run effective performance management and performance dialogues, the primary boundary condition is a fundamental understanding of the Lean philosophy. You don’t have to be a fan (although we believe it helps 😊). However, if you can’t identify waste, the idea of performance management simply makes no sense
B. Safe learning environment
Effective performance management requires an open learning culture. The entire idea of performance dialogues is centred around getting people to learn how to improve. Performance Dialogues that are not well executed can easily lead to a culture of fear and ‘cover your ass’. Openness and transparency are essential to be able to work on the performance of your team.
C. Discipline to maintain: Just keep going!
The concept of Performance Management with structured Performance Dialogues is a very effective way to continuously improve your work and your organisation. It can be great fun and very rewarding to identify and ‘catch’ the improvement potential. However, over time structured performance management can become a bit tedious. We often compare it to brushing your teeth: even if it feels boring, you have to keep doing it every single day to capture the benefits.
D. Positive attitude
This is of course connected to the element of creating a safe learning environment. Some people get grumpy by seeing all the improvement potential. The fact that you find improvement potential does not mean people have done a bad job. It means there is improvement potential, which is great. You, your people, the team can do even better. If you don’t find improvement potential, you are in trouble, because the fact is: your competitors will!
We wish you all the best in continuously improving performance across all four dimensions.
