Setting up an effective performance management system

Posted on July 11, 2022 by Brad Copes, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.

When I was a young manager and leader starting my career, we were taught and expected to follow a structured one-on-one performance meeting process. Every week we met formally with people we supervised, at the exact same time. We had a relatively rigid competency model we followed for executing these performance management meetings.

What did I learn operating an effective performance management system?

I learned the number of people you can supervise is much larger than I think people believe. It wasn’t uncommon to have 20 to 30 managers reporting to you at one time. With a tight and efficient weekly meeting, you could offer the necessary direction and ensure people felt a level of support. There was support because everyone had “their time” to talk directly one-on-one with their supervisor. And they had this time weekly. I see people work in contexts where they feel little support where managers aren’t objectively stretched by the volume of direct reports, but managers are lacking the cadence of a formal process.

I learned the power of relationship. These meetings were “protected” time with people you worked with. Nothing cancelled them. Nothing postponed them. And you weren’t just “down to work”. You utilized these meetings to create and sustain rapport with people you worked with. Intentional weekly one-on-one meetings make this happen.

What did I learn doesn’t help create an effective performance management system?

These performance meetings were often a success. We did this because it did just work. But it wasn’t all sunshine and unicorns. Often these performance meetings, I’ll assume, were the most dreaded meetings in the week for people we were managing.

The lesson I had to learn is how to not have performance management just become micro-management in disguise. Performance management is gaining direction and feeling supported by your supervisor. A supervisor layering direction and support in one-on-one meetings is what creates an environment where you can have accountability.

When we are talking about one-on-one performance meetings, what is just micro-management in disguise?

Painfully pestering an employee with “status updates” is not performance management. If you spend your one-on-one meetings finding out what is going on, what is done, what must happen next; you aren’t managing performance you are just getting a status update. I mean you can get that in an email or a text message if you really want to micro-manage. That’s not what creates accountability.

Telling someone exactly what to do with a direction download is not performance management. Don’t get me wrong. There is a time and place for direction. I believe a lot of the times employees are looking for more direction than they are getting. Nothing wrong with asking from time-to-time “what direction do you want on this issue?” But does this need to be your default? Managing performance is helping someone else execute on their goals. If you are only telling someone what to do all the time and giving advice on how to do it, that’s not helping someone hit their goals. That’s just trying to program a robot for yourself.

What are the roadblocks in the way of implementing an effective performance management system?

Today as an executive coach I’m learning that in real small businesses there are significant roadblocks to setting up an effective performance management system. The missing pieces of the puzzle are often:

1. Clarity on expectations. You simply can’t have performance meetings in the absence of well thought out and discussed annual objectives. If you don’t have the expectations of these goals, exactly what is it that you are managing performance towards with these meetings? A lack of clear goals often pushes one-on-one performance meetings into status updates. Because there isn’t anything else to talk about.

2. Tracking of key performance metrics and issues. Often there is no agreement on what metrics are being tracked and exactly how that is going to happen. Then meetings don’t have the information required to understand the problems that exist. And along the way there isn’t efficient note taking on issues to have relevant follow-up.

3. Commitment to the meeting cadence. My take is that when we don’t have the expectations and the tracking above everyone involved gets that it’s fine to blow off the meetings. They weren’t set up for success anyways. And they feel like a waste of time. Unfortunately, the value of one-on-one meetings is often from the cultural commitment to the cadence.

If you are looking to up your game with the way you deliver performance management feel free to connect to gain access to our free content on the topic from Bedrock Advising.