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PERFORMANCE
MANAGEMENT
1.
INTRODUCTION
Most of
us have, one time or another, experienced the frustration
and uncertainty of not knowing what is expected of you in
the work situation, or not knowing how you are doing - having
phantom managers who you rarely ever saw, or who were scared
or incompetent to give you the necessary direction and feedback.
There
is a saying that "if you don't know where you are going,
then any road will take you there".
Any organization
that finds itself on this road is doomed - local and international
competition will soon take care of that.
But although
it is the job of top management to show the right way, they
can not do it all by themselves - it will have to be a team
effort behind which all employees need to throw their combined
weight.
This means
clarity of vision and purpose from top to bottom so that everybody
gets to know the identified road, and what their part in it
should be.
This philosophy
is supported by the concept of cascading ('deploying') goals
and objectives from top to bottom throughout an organization.
CASCADED
GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
The process
should start with Strategic Planning by the top management
team who should come up with a Corporate Strategic Business
Plan for the year, containing, inter alia, the corporate vision,
mission, values, goals and strategies for the short to long
term. In turn, this should be followed by similar strategic
and operational planning sessions at the consecutively lower
unit levels (e.g. division, department, section), each lower
level unit using the higher level unit's Business Plan as
input into their own process. Objectives for individual employees
are then derived from the appropriate Business Plan of the
unit of which they are members. Planning, therefore, should
take place "top-down".
So, by
each employee achieving their own objectives, the corporate
vision and goals will eventually be achieved, "bottom-up".
This process
supports the notion that if you fail to plan, you plan to
fail - but it also demonstrates how top-down goals and objectives
are operationalized into practical and achievable individual
employee objectives, right down to the lowest level in the
organization.
Let's
look in a bit more detail how this process works:
At a Strategic
Planning Session, the strategic priorities and goals for a
unit are decided, but eventually also who should take responsibility
for what, by way of an Operational Action Plan.
The strategic
planning session is then followed by one-on-one performance
planning meetings between line managers and their direct reports,
drawing from this Operational Action Plan those objectives
allocated to the respective employees. To this then are added
any further objectives the job role demands, e.g. as stated
in Job Descriptions.
Before
the next, say, 3-, 4- or 6-monthly formal Performance Reviews/Appraisals
take place, the unit/team should meet again to review the
achievement of the previously set Operational Action Plan,
and to renew/adapt it for the next performance period as necessary.
Strategic
Planning precedes Employee Performance Management, but falls
outside the scope of this guide, so let's focus on Performance
Management in more detail.
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