A change agent brought in from the outside needs more than being a change agent from the outside
In my previous post, I explored the management “design” of hiring someone from a successful organization to bring change to your org. It’s a great idea – hire from the best, and you get the best. And presumably, this person is a top performer. Win-win! However, this can be a perilous design, as the organization you’re hiring from perhaps created great performance through the org processes and culture. The success was not necessarily via the individual’s greatness, but from the collective efforts of the previous org. But that’s what you’re hiring for when you hire this kind of expertise – change and improvement. So you need to be committed to it.
Let’s imagine that you hire a change agent who is ready to bring in the successful ideas and practices of the prior org to the new org. What more needs to be done to help this change agent be successful? Let’s take a look. Read more
Management Design: The “designs” we have now: Recruit someone from a successful comparable organization
The Manager by Designsm blog advocates for a new field called Management Design. The idea is that the creation of great and effective people managers in organizations should not occur by accident, but by design. Currently, the creation of great managers falls under diverse, mostly organic methods, which create mixed results at best and disasters at worst. This is the latest of a series that explores the existing designs that create managers in organizations. Today’s design: Hire someone from a successful comparable organization, such as a competitor. Read more
The Art of Providing Feedback: At least try to describe what to do instead
Providing performance feedback is a neglected art in people management. In a prior article, I discussed how the more specific and more immediate the feedback, the more artful it is. Today, I discuss something that should be obvious but isn’t always observed when managers provide feedback: At least try to provide the correct course of action. This is the constructive part of constructive feedback.
Many managers seem comfortable saying that they don’t like the output, actions or performance of an employee. They may even believe that this qualifies as providing feedback. Here are some examples of some less than artistic “feedback” managers may give:
“You didn’t do it right. Fix it.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I don’t agree with this.”
“This isn’t what I had in mind.”
“This is all wrong.”
“You suck.”
Another example of how to switch from the dreaded strengths and weaknesses discussion to a strategic, productive discussion
I have been writing a lot lately about how managers are requested to discuss and document employees’ strengths and weaknesses. My conclusion: This is absurd and damaging. However, knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your team is a necessary and important part of people management indeed. So instead of putting your team member on the spot to list out strengths and weaknesses and then documenting these with a development plan, I propose instead engaging in a strategic discussion with the employee on what’s best for the organization and the employee. Today, I’ll demonstrate how to transition from the dreaded annual review discussion of strengths and weaknesses to a more appropriate strategic discussion that provides value for you, the organization and your employee. Let’s go! Read more
Employee strengths and weaknesses discussions should be purely strategic — with examples!
In my previous posts (here and here), I explored the often absurd and damaging results that often occur when pursuing discussions about an employee’s weaknesses. In many cases, managers are formally requested to discuss with their employee’s strengths and weaknesses during the annual review process, with confusing, if not angering results.
Absurd, damaging, confusing, angering – these are pretty harsh words. But surely, Walter, there have to be times when discussing weaknesses with an employee is appropriate? Of course there are! They should be strategic and collaborative discussions that are designed to drive the organization forward using the abilities of the employee.
Instead of having a discussion about the employee’s strengths and weaknesses, the discussion should be centered around where the employee’s skills – whether strong or weak – best fit in the organization’s needs, and how they can be leveraged to the maximum benefit for both the organization and the employee.
Here are some example situations. Read more
Bonus! Five more reasons why discussing weaknesses with employees is absurd and damaging
In my previous post, I described five reasons discussing weaknesses with an employee often seems so awkward, despite the best intentions. Yet, managers are frequently asked to do so on an employee’s annual review form, which, by design, creates some unnecessary and damaging conversations. Here are five more reasons discussing weaknesses with employees fails: Read more
Five reasons why focusing on weaknesses with employees is absurd and damaging
Many managers are asked to discuss with their employees the various strengths and weaknesses of the employee. This often backfires, as the employee is appropriately suspicious of the manager’s intent when discussing “weaknesses”. The reason: This will appear on the employee’s annual performance review, and becomes part of the employee’s “brand” going forward – even if the weaknesses are irrelevant or nonsensical. As a result, any discussion about an employee’s weaknesses should be for the purpose of identifying and planning strategic needs of the organization. Instead what happens more often than not is that a discussion of an employee’s weaknesses is performed simply to document bad things about an employee. But why would you want to do that? You don’t. And here’s why not: Read more
Tenets of Management Design: Focus on the basics, then move to style points
In this post, I continue to explore the tenets of the new field I’m pioneering, “Management Design.” Management Design is a response to the bad existing designs that are currently used in creating managers. These current designs describe how managers tend to be created by accident, rather than by design, or that efforts to develop quality and effective managers fall short.
So today’s tenet: Focus on basic tasks of people and team management, then move to style points
I introduce the concept of style points as a way of prioritizing what goes into creating great managers, and the steps that should be taken to get to the status of “great manager.” Style points are the flourishes that can be performed if you have successfully completed the fundamentals, the basics, or the preliminary tasks. Someone who tries to go for style points without having mastered the basics can look pretty foolish. Unfortunately, this tends to happen a lot with managers, both new and experienced. If you have ever rolled your eyes in response to a manager’s actions, then it likely he or she was trying get style points prior to having done something more basic.
The myth of “one good thing, one bad thing” on a performance review
A mistaken notion that many managers have is the belief that on a performance review they need to comment on and provide examples of both the good things and the bad things that an employee did over the course of the review period. This is sometimes taken to the next level, where the manager says one good thing and one bad thing about each area of the employee’s performance.
Here’s an example of something a high performer might see on a review:
Jeff exceeded sales expectations by 15%, placing him in the top 10% of the sales force. Jeff was below expectations in submitting his weekly status reports on time, and the reports he did submit were wordy.
This is a mistake and this practice should be stopped.
Providing corrective feedback: Trend toward tendencies instead of absolutes
An important skill of any manager is the ability to provide performance feedback. However, many managers prefer to delay providing performance feedback because of fear of the impression it creates to address an issue with an employee.
For example, managers will delay providing feedback based on fears that the employee will think that manager has forever judged the employee as doing the job incorrectly. Or, perhaps, since the evidence is there that the job is being performed at a lower level, the manager will, indeed, judge the employee as forever being less capable of doing the job. That is, if the manager is providing feedback, they have rendered final judgment. With attitudes like this, you could see how both the manager and the employee dread performance feedback conversations.
Neither of these interpretations of what performance feedback achieves is appropriate. Providing final judgment of the employee is not the point of performance feedback. Providing performance feedback is a discussion aimed toward changing behaviors for the better, and has been discussed in this blog previously, the more specific and more immediate, the more artful the feedback. Once performance feedback has been provided, if the job performed improves, then that dreaded final judgment is, by definition, wrong.
So how to help get past this “final judgment” issue? In today’s post, I provide a way of talking about the behaviors of an employee that is less absolute and provides a more likely path for improvement for the employee. Here’s the tip:
As you transition to making the evaluation and correction, provide qualifiers – “it is a trend” or “it’s a tendency” — that do not imply absolutes. Read more
