Progressive Managers’ Network

Clearly Ken had been working on a Boris Victory Contingency Plan…

These days I am 6ft 4″ and carry a few extra pounds.

However there was a time when I was 5ft 4″, skinny as a rake and sought after by rowing crews as a cox.  Yes the small person who sits in the back of the boat - barking a very limited range of orders and making small adjustments to direction with a tiny rudder.

Truth of the matter is that as a cox I could achieve very little.  I could urge the rowers to give more effort, or even get them to ease off a little if they are in danger of peaking too early.   I could plot the best course possible.  But that was just about it.

I couldn’t really see what was going on in the boat.  I could tell just how hard the crew was currently working (the stroke rate) and could ask for extra effort in short bursts to try to get the boat ahead of the competition.  I could make some educated guesses at what individuals were doing by watching how their oars moved through the water.

I couldn’t coach the crew.  The coach would usually be be seen on the bank, riding a bicycle and shouting instructions to the rowers.

In terms of really helping the crew to improve performance - well that was out of my hands.  I could just get the best out of them on the day.  I would do this by putting their effort into context.  Keeping them informed about whether we were catching the opposition or not.  About how far we had to go before a bend came into our favour or we reached the finish line.

All I could do was create a context in which the crew were likely to give me more effort.

And I meet a lot of managers who work just like a cox.  They tell good stories and demand more effort in return for prizes.  But they never get their bike onto the river bank to really understand what is going on in the boat.

They miss a lot of chances, that a cox never has, to develop their crew.

‘Because so many organisations will be competing for the same resources, the (HR) profession will have to manage a marketplace which has changed from one where employers choose to one where potential employees choose.’

Florent Franceur - WFPMA President

I know it is not much of a highlight - but at least it has the virtue of being true.  If you want to recruit and retina good people you had better have  compelling offer - and you had better help them to achieve in their own terms - or they will go elsewhere. Only the whelmers will remain!

We are a reservoir of literally human resources, but we don’t always dig deep enough because it’s inconvenient. Sometimes tidiness and efficiency get in the way of creativity’

Charles Handy

This one made me smile!

The performance review process is not about writing good performance reviews.

It is about planning a trajectory for the employees work in the coming year - based on an analysis of their performance in the past year - it is about influencing the future.

Always ask the employee to provide you with their own self assessment 2-3 weeks before you have to deliver their review.  Ask the to give examples of their work that support their judgement.

Only look at their self-review after you have prepared your review of their performance for the past year . Identify where there is agreement and open your review meeting with a discussion of these areas. This gets the meeting off to a solid start and helps to make some quick progress. Leave areas where your assessments differ to later in the meeting.

Where your assessment differs from theirs - whether you have rated then more highly or less highly than they have rated themselves - then you should re-visit the DATA on which you have based your assessments and in the review be prepared to back up your assessment with your data.

Before you show your hand ask them to give specific examples of things that they did in the last year that have led them to their judgement.  If they produce data that you have overlooked and that seriously casts doubt on your data and your judgement then be prepared to revise your review.  THIS SHOULD HAPPEN VERY RARELY.  If it does happen you need to urgently review your own process for collecting data on employee performance throughout the year and using it to prepare your reviews.

You should have several pieces of data available to support your judgement - collected over the past year - especially where it is less favourable than their own.  You do have data to base your review on - don’t you?

After the review the employee should be clear on:

• Your overall assessment of their performance last year;
• What this has earned them (promotion, pay rise, recognition, more responsibility, no change, less responsibility, demotion, termination);
• Specific goals and objectives for the coming year.

The performance of your team members is a direct reflection of your performance as a manager.  If you have one or more people whose performance is not moving in the ‘right’ direction then you need to seriously re-think the way that you are managing them.

Don’t be tempted to provide ‘vanilla’ reviews in an attempt to hide your own management weaknesses.

You can only provide good performance reviews if you effectively manage individual performance throughout the year.

The Healthcare Commission has published a report based on an annual survey of 155 000 NHS staff and some of the findings make interesting reading for the progressive manager.

• Only 26% thought their trust valued their work. This figure ranged between trusts from 58% to 11%.
• Survey responses indicate poor levels of communication between staff and senior management, with only 22% thinking it is effective.
• The survey shows that only 53% receive clear feedback on their work.
• Results from previous NHS surveys have shown that staff who had received an appraisal in the previous 12 months were more satisfied with their jobs and less likely to consider leaving.
• In spite of this fact only just over 60% of staff had been given an appraisal in the previous 12 months.
• Only 39% of staff were satisfied or very satisfied with the recognition they get for good work. Not feeling valued was the reason most often given by staff who said they were thinking about leaving their jobs.
• Communication between staff and senior managers is poor. Only 23% said senior managers involved staff in important decisions and only 22% considered communication between staff and senior management to be effective. Thirty-one per cent said senior managers encouraged staff to suggest new ideas and 17% said different parts of the trust communicate effectively with each other.

For the Leeds Teaching Hospital Trust only 47% of staff said that they had received an appraisal or performance development review in the last 12 months. Only 16% said that they had received an appraisal or performance development review in the last 12 months in which they had agreed clear objectives for their work, which they had found useful in helping them improve how they do their job, and which had left them feeling that their work is valued by their employer.

Things were marginally better in the Leeds Primary Care Trust. 22% of staff at the trust said that they had received an appraisal or performance development review in the last 12 months, in which they had agreed clear objectives for their work, which they had found useful in helping them improve how they do their job, and which had left them feeling that their work is valued by their employer. The trust’s score of 22% was below average for PCTs in England.

39% of staff at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust said that they had agreed a personal development plan as part of their appraisal or performance development review in the last 12 months. The trust’s score of 39% was in the lowest 20% of acute trusts in England. The trust’s 2007 score has not changed significantly since the 2006 survey, when 39% of staff also gave this response!

What puzzles me is how any organisation can survive these appalling statistics. And I think the NHS is probably no worse than many in the public, private and third sectors.

The quality of management in the UK is generally poor. I think this shows the massive potential for performance improvement that lies in simply getting the management basics right.

Anyone for Progressive Management?

That is the ‘espoused’ theory in just about every business I have EVER worked in or consulted for. It says it on the web site and in the annual report so it must be true.

But the theory in practice is usually a very different one.

• People are a controllable cost
• People are interchangeable parts - just fulfilling job descriptions
• ‘Good people’ require little or no management time (”You want me to spend 30 minutes a week looking after our most important asset? Don’t you know I’ve got problems to sort out…Any way they know what they are doing and wnat me getting in the way…”)
• ‘Mediocre people’ require little or no management time (”They do a decent job - as long as I don’t expect them to take initiative, make things better or use their common sense”).
• ‘Bad people’ eat up hours of management time (”I have to be on their backs all the time - the problem is that you can’t sack anyone in this organisation…”)

This theory in action is a little bit like the moonwalking bear. Unless you look for it you won’t know its there.

Sorting out these problems requires a bit of structure, some commitment and a fair bit of courage.

It is true that we don’t see with our eyes as much as with our brain. Sure the eyes capture the photons - but it is in the brain that we actually do the seeing - largely based on what we are looking for.

If you need proof, try this.  NB you will need to hear the soundtrack!

Our ‘findings really do follow our seekings’, and our brain only lets us see what makes sense in the context.

This is especially important when we start to form opinions about people or projects. If we believe that they are good - then all we will see is the good stuff (as our subconscious filters aout what does not fit in with our pre-conceived ideas). If on the other hand we think that people are bad or lazy then all we wil tend to see is the behaviour that serves to confirm our beliefs.

Learning to observe and feedback on a range of work behaviours in a non judgemental, non-evaluative way is a key skill for the effective manager.  BTW there is some evidence that women in general tend to be more open to ‘peripheral’ stuff, to pick up on the background and make more sense of it than men.  I wonder if there are gender differences in spotting the dancing bear!

Great managers know what matters.

They know both what matters to the organisation (vision, values, goals, behaviours, strategy in action) and what matters to individual employees.  Their families’ names. Who is terrified of flying. Their favourite hobbies and interests.  Who has expressed interest in a leadership role.

They take every opportunity to recognise and appreciate what matters to the organisation and to recognise and respect what matters most to the individual.  They help to connect the dots between what matters to people personally and what matters to the organisation.

In my work with Progressive Managers often the largest challenge is that of recognising the good stuff.  Often managers do not see enough of what people do to be able to observe (even less recognise) it.  And if they are in a position to observe it, often the subtleties go un-noticed and un-acknowledged.

The best managers know what they expect to see an employee doing to support vision, values and goals.  They look for it  - and when they see it they acknowledge it.  If they don’t see it then they will ask questions:

‘Is there anything more that you could do to put our values into practice?’

‘Are there any opportunities that you can see to help reach the goals we have set?’

Good managers know their stuff.  They know excellent work when they see it - and they know that they MUST appreciate it.  Lesser managers struggle to distinguish excellence from mediocrity - and unwittingly establish a standard that says mediocrity will do.

‘What Gets Measured Gets Done’ gets my vote for the single, most dangerous, least accurate, management ‘truism’ of them all!

Suppose we changed the expression to ‘What Gets Recognised Gets Done’.   What difference would that make to the way we do our business?

First of all managers and leaders would have to think about what they want to recognise in their organisation.  This is a big question.  It speaks to values, performance and ethos.  Recognition encourages consideration of many things that cannot be easily ‘measured’.

If Enron had ‘recognised’ more than short term financial performance would things have  turned out differently?  What are Goldman Sachs ‘recognising’ as they pay out £8.4 billion in performance related bonuses to their staff (UK employees of the bank average £320 000 in Performance Related Pay)?  Is financial performance the only thing that matters for Goldman Sachs or do they provide equally strong ‘recognition’ for other things that might matter like ‘ethics’ or ‘long term customer relationships’?

Secondly managers and leaders would have to consider how are they going to recognise it?  What does excellence look like, sound like, feel like?  You can’t just rely on the numbers.  You might have to go and observe people doing the work:

• see how they speak to customers
• watch how they contribute to meetings
• understand how they prepare a paper for the board.

Feedback becomes a primary tool for recognising what works and what doesn’t.  It also becomes a primary tool for reward as people start to get recognition and validation for the good stuff that they do.

So the next time someone says ‘What gets measured gets done’  perhaps you should ask them if they really believe what they say.