Tag Archives: performance management

Leadership development is not (only) HR’s job

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Or so says this HBS article (via Be Excellent).

Instead, they argue it’s the job of every operating manager and senior management up to and including the board should play a part:

In this worldview, it is part of the line manager’s job to recognize his subordinates’ developmental needs, to help them cultivate new skills, and to provide them opportunities for professional development and personal growth. Managers must do this even if it means nudging their rising stars into new functional areas or business units. They must mentor emerging leaders, from their own and other departments, passing on important knowledge and providing helpful evaluations and feedback. The operating managers’ own evaluations, development plans, and promotions, in turn, depend on how successfully they nurture their subordinates.

Further, boards can play a vital role in shepherding up-and-comers. Because they are detached from  day to day operations, they can more clearly see the company’s leadership needs and bench strength.

This feels about right to me, but if it’s the case, what then is the role of HR? To me, it’s twofold: guidance and enablement.

Guidance in that HR experts will always be needed to help assess an individual’s ability and potential inside the organization. If the board adds value because they are outside the company, HR can add value by being the insider.  As far as enablement, by providing and owning strategic platforms like performance management, HR can ensure they are the fundamental enabler of leadership development and succession planning.

Thoughts?

 

 

Why smart employees should love, nay, DEMAND performance management

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With all this talk of the downsides of performance management going on in the blogosphere, I thought I might take a look at this from the employee perspective. Hey wait, I AM an employee! Thusly: Some reasons why I, Max Goldman, like performance management and wouldn’t want to work for a company that didn’t do it - a brief list:

1. What the heck is my job again?
Being just one piece of a bigger entity like a company is not an easy thing. It’s sometimes hard to know what part I need to play to add the most value. I want to add as much value as possible because I want to advance my own career, make more money and do something important with my life. Our performance management system lets me understand what I can be doing to support the company’s larger goals, know what’s expected of me and find opportunities to do bigger and better things.

2. Why is THAT guy driving a free Touareg?
At our company meeting this past January, four VW Touaregs were given out to top performers -people who add a lot of value to the company and our customers. Two went to salespeople. They bring in the bucks, so fine. But two went to regular employees. Why are they driving brand new, free cars (or getting watches, vacations, bonuses – you get my drift)? If I know why, I can work at those qualities and results and get myself a brand new ride next year. But what are those qualities, what is the measure of success? Without performance management, it’s anecdotal, arbitrary and simply unfair.

3. What is this company doing, anyway?
I now know what it is I’m meant to be doing (see #1), but what is everyone else doing? Why does any of this matter? What is this company striving at? What are the strategies and tactics that will make us all (and me, particularly) successful? Our performance management system lets me understand that. How what I’m doing aligns to what my boss and his boss are working on. Why what I’m doing matters. And I want it to matter.

4.  What’s wrong with me?
I admit it – I’m not perfect. I’m close, dammit, but I’m just not there – yet! What can I do to get better? What areas do I need to work on to perform at the next level? Without performance management maybe I’ll figure it out and maybe I won’t. With performance management, my development needs are outlined and I can know where I need… (ahem) work. Even better, I can get my boss to agree so when I nail those things, he has no choice but to admit it.

5.  What’s great about me?
Like I said, I’m pretty close to perfect – now tell me about it! It makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track. Performance management forces my peers and my boss to tell me what I’m good at so I can lord it over everyone and do my special victory dance. Ok, no dancing, but you get the idea. People, myself included, like to know what we’ve done well so we can keep doing it.

6. Pay me more money. And a bonus, too.
What’s that, I achieved every goal we set out? Nice. Pay me. When I know what I’m being measured on, I can work against those goals. When I achieve them, there is no choice but to recognize my performance. If the company doesn’t, I can take my clear track record of success elsewhere.

What do you all think? What are the reasons you like (or dislike) the results of your performance management system or process?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s not the foundation, its the houses

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Our good friend Dubs thinks performance management is wrong. Not just broken. Not just in need of improvement. Flat out a flawed paradigm for improving company performance.  Perhaps predictably, I find it difficult to agree. I’m not saying that the current concept of Performance Management is perfect, but I’m not ready to call it worthless and scrap it either. Read on for the reasons why.

Continue reading →

Destroying your career in one easy step

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I was forwarded this soon-to-be infamous email exchange between a spurned hiring lawyer and an uppity law school graduate today. It’s remarkable how little emotional intelligence is displayed on both sides. Sometimes it takes a little effort and common sense to be polite, but it’s usually worth it – and especially so when you’re a want-to-be member of a small professional community.

It reminds me of all the times I’ve encountered such things in my own professional career. I once had a boss who was so generally offensive for lack of emotional intelligence that her staff was a constantly shifting grouping of people who rotated into her department hesitantly and out of her group as quickly as possible. Vendors would refuse the company’s business once they understood who they’d be required to work with. But this company had no formal performance management or 360 process that would have enabled the feedback that may have had a chance to fix things. The result was a largely ineffective group.

Changing people’s behavior is one of the most difficult challenges there is, but without an infrastructure for providing feedback, it’s virtually impossible. Hank Paulson, the CEO of investment bank Goldman Sachs delivered a memorable quote that I picked up somewhere:

“One of the things we have done for years is 360-degree reviews.  It’s amazing when you go to a leader and say, “There are 30 people who reviewed you, and 30 of them trust you.  But all 30 say you don’t listen well.”  It has an impact.”

 

Performance management for growth companies

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Another article over at WPS mag to which I was pointed. Bausch & Lomb (a customer) via Vice President of Human Resources and Chief Privacy Officer Clay Osborne is talking about what performance management means to them as a growth focused company. Just a few years back, Bausch and Lomb was in a turnaround situation. Today, the turnaround is over and the company is again focused on growth – from a $2 billion enterprise to $5 billion.  Clay talks about how performance management is an important component of reaching that goal:

A growth culture requires entrepreneurial behavior—more innovative, more creative types of behaviors and attitudes that are reinforced. To get from a $2 billion company to a $5 billion dollar company in five years requires not only mergers and acquisitions, it requires tremendous growth in sales. From a performance management standpoint, we target every individual’s objectives to those broad goals, and to ensure that it’s done in an ethical way we embed in ‘the right way’ objectives, ethical integrity expectations and behavior.

January HR Events Listing

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Blogs are supposed to be informational resources, right? Not just a bunch of idiots mouthing off at each other. Well, in that vein, I give you a roundup of all the web events I can find that have to do with HR. I’m always trying to see what’s going on out there, and I figure other people must be, too.

Mostly I’m focusing on the obvious sources, so feel free to submit your events and I will update this post as they come in. I hope to do this monthly if it gets a good response. Feel free to chime in and let us know which ones you’re planning to attend

Onward – Listing after the jump.

January 11th
Creating A Corporate University That Succeeds @ HR.com
The Elements of Employer Brand Building @ Human Capital Institute
Getting Started with Performance Management @ WPSmag.com

January 12th
Effective Use of Tools to help you with your PR and Marketing @ HR.com

January 17th
HCM Technology State of the Union: What we learned in 2005 that will affect your decisions in 2006 @ HR.com

January 18th

Integrated Talent Management or Best of Breed – Determining What is Right for your Organisation and How To Make it Work For You @ HR.com

January 19th

Building a Recognition Culture for the Fast Lane @ HR.com
SuccessFactors Demo

January 20th
Government Marketing Best Practices @ HR.com
Recruitment CRM – Features & Functionalities of Relationship Managers @ Human Capital Institute

January 23rd
Best Practices in Bottom Line Recruitment @ Human Capital Institute

January 25th
Implementing a performance management software solution: Ensuring success and user adoption @ HR.com
The Development of Managerial and Executive Talent: A Dual Perspective @ Human Capital Institute

January 26th
Measuring Leadership Bench Strength: How is it done? @ HR.com


 

Succession planning beef, anyone?

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Sometimes all the high-level talk about performance management can leave you – how should I put this? – wanting more. Today I sat through a 45 minute webinar that left me thinking – "alright, I know you CAN do it, and it SHOULD work – but can you show me HOW TO do it, and that it DOES work?" I mean, where’s the beef? Show me the money! Is any of this actually real?

Well, in that vein I came across some data today showing that one of our customers with about 4,000 employees is saving half a million dollars per year on recruiting costs (because they are able to identify and promote more people from within), and has identified 40% more successors than before implementing the technology. I’m not bringing this up to toot our SuccessFactors horn (alright, maybe just a little) but instead, to show you some beef.

It’s easy to get caught up in the jargon and sales pitches when you’re talking about enterprise software. Don’t forget to ask about the beef.

On-demand HR apps for SMBs

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Interesting report from AMI Research showing that On-demand HR applications are taking off among small and medium sized businesses. There’s a very strong case to be made for software as a service (SaaS) use among SMBs – low upfront costs, easy implementations, high configurability, super-quick time to real value and so forth. We released a couple of completely new products recently to serve these markets – Professional Edition and Manager’s Edition. I’ll spare you the commercial (you can click on the links if you’re interested).

From the report’s press release:

According to Sau Lam, Research Analyst at AMI-Partners, “Several factors are fueling this trend. Traditional on-premise HR applications are often too costly, time-consuming and resource-intensive for most SMBs to deploy and manage. Full-service HR outsourcing can also be too expensive. Plus, it requires that customers sacrifice visibility and control. Web-based solutions can potentially provide SMBs with a more viable option for servicing their HR needs,” Ms Lam continued. “At the same time, SMB HR needs are growing. They need to automate operations to meet increasing regulatory requirements, and compete more effectively to maintain a dwindling supply of skilled personnel in a shrinking labor force.”

Much has been made about the Internet as a force of democratization, and that’s true even in the world of enterprise software. As a former small business owner, I loved SaaS applications becuase they gave me functionality that similar sized competitors could only dream of. In that way, they lent a real competitive advantage. That advantage is especially true with HR software.

Workforce performance management is, in some ways, more impactful in smaller companies in which there is less margin for error. Good HR applications can reduce administrative burdens that can bog you down. They can also provide the benefits of goal alignment and performance management processes that make sure everyone is pulling together and that the company is getting the most out of its employees and vice versa.

 

Best friends forever: HR and Marketing

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Frank "The Proposalnator" Lynn (author of this recent post) points me to an article in Fortune called "For Happier Customers, Call HR." It echoes something I heard recently at a talk given by the legendary Jac Fitz-Enz – namely that unless marketing backs up its taglines with some customer service people who drink the kool-aid, what you get is a load of customer experiences that don’t match with customer expectations.

The article tells the tale of customers of T-Mobile who were told they would "Get More," but instead got long hold times and clueless reps. So guess how you solve the problem? Put HR and Marketing together to make sure the people being hired match the values being promoted.

From the article:

Sounds like common sense, doesn’t it? But surprisingly few companies do it. "We call the gap between HR and marketing the ‘white space’ in organizations," says Don Schultz, founder of a think tank at Northwestern University called the Forum for People and Performance Management. "The customer-contact people don’t report to anyone in marketing or have any contact with them." Neither does anyone in HR, so HR isn’t able to put customer-service people in place who can deliver on the marketers’ message. Northwestern’s latest research (see ROI of Integrated Marketing at www.performanceforum.org) shows that both HR and marketing managers are well aware of the white space: "We started studying this because people from 40-odd big companies like Honeywell, GE, and AT&T asked us how to fix it." 

Read more for how T-Mobile addressed the problem. 

Frank Lynn guest posts: It’s a trust issue

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One of my favorite 80’s TV shows was Sledge Hammer.  Hammer was an offbeat cop in the Get Smart/Monk tradition who had a great tagline: “Trust me.  I know what I’m doing.”  This was the ultimate ironic statement because his wacky, unconventional methods didn’t exactly reinforce to the viewer that he knew what he was doing, nor that he should be trusted.  To organizations looking for Workforce Performance Management software, vendors sound like Sledge Hammer.  They all claim to be trustworthy, but the proof is in the pudding.

As SuccessFactors’ Proposal Manager, I deal with trust issues on a daily basis.  Many RFPs and Technical Questionnaires have questions that center around data security.  In today’s post-HIPAA, post-Sarbanes-Oxley environment, safeguarding data and implementing comprehensive controls has become a top priority.  Risk Managers and IT Directors are under a lot of stress.          

In addition to developing a comprehensive suite of Workforce Performance Management software solutions, SuccessFactors has taken steps to ensure that your organization’s Risk Management professionals can sleep better at night, including:

·        A fully redundant, secure network infrastructure with backup and failover capabilities
·        Intrusion Detection and Vulnerability scanning
·        24x7x365 Live operator monitoring
·        Configurable user group and data access permissions that allow you to comply with data privacy laws

Additionally, we are Safe Harbor Certified by the US Department of Commerce.

As a Software as a Service provider with an industry-leading 98% renewal rate, we recognize the importance of earning and keeping the trust of our customers.  That’s why we allow them to perform infrastructure and application vulnerability testing – to have every assurance that their data is safe in our system.

SuccessFactors’ is the industry leading Trusted Advisor that supports organizations in achieving their objectives of rapidly aligning, developing, motivating, and maintaining their high-performance workforces.

Trust us.  We know what we’re doing.