Nov 7, 2013 | Management, People Management |
In an earlier post, I talked about using performance appraisals as a tool to have a personalised, growth-focussed conversation with people about their careers within the context of your organisation’s business operating environment.
It is important to ensure that these conversation are well grounded in the opportunities available and the established career paths you have set up for your teams.
One of the ways I have done this is by adapting the Craftsman Model for Career Management to create a tool that I call Syed’s Slope of Expectations:
It essentially takes the stages along the craftsman journey and plots them on a linear slope, outlining the path one needs to follow to move forward in their career. Remember that this is a model, so it necessarily (over)simplifies things to allow focus on a particular area of analysis.
One of the reasons this works well is that it easy to understand. Everyone gets the metaphor, and it doesn’t require lots of planning or documentation to start using it. You can go out for a coffee and use it to have a casual chat while waiting in in queue for your slightly hot organic weak decaf skim soy caramel latte with extra froth.
How it works
Basically, it can be used to have conversations with individuals and explore one or more of the following:
- Where on the slope they currently are.
- Have they moved on the slope?
- Which direction they’re moving in (or standing still).
- Why do they feel they’re moving in that direction?
- What needs to happen to keep moving forward (or stop sliding back)?
- Is this still the right slope from the last time we spoke?
- If this is the wrong slope, how do we get them to the right one?
This isn’t an exhaustive list. Use these as starting points and go from there. This is an analysis tool, so make sure you ask lots of open-ended and probing questions in a non-interrogative way.
Although it isn’t essential, it also helps to have some sort of career progression framework in place to refer to when having these conversations.
It’s all in the name
When I first called it “Syed’s Slope of Expectations”, it was deliberately meant to be a joke. Everyone chuckled when I first drew it up in a group-wide meeting and explained how it works. But the name has interesting connotations:
The expectations are mine
Potentially the more accurate name is “The Slope of Syed’s Expectations”, since I expect people to put in their best effort at work. If they don’t, then they let themselves, the rest of the team, and the organisation down, and I really want to understand why so I can help them get over it.
It’s an incline
Climbing up, by definition, is challenging. If someone isn’t being challenged, they’re not growing and getting better. Not a good thing. It’s understandable that everyone goes through periods where they just need to consolidate their skills or are going through a major life event outside work. Other than that, they really need to be ploughing ahead.
If you’re not going forward, you’re standing still or sliding down
I really like it when someone identifies themselves in this situation. It requires a keen sense of awareness and contextual understanding, and tells me that I need to invest more time to help this person out. We can explore why a person is feeling this way, whether their perception is just based on some short-term frustration or an actual issue, or how we can find ways to remove impediments from their path.
It’s really about communication
Communication is one of the foundational elements of great people management. Hopefully this tool helps improve yours as you move along your path to becoming a management and leadership master.
I’d love to hear if you use a similar concept, and what your experience with it has been.
Nov 5, 2013 | Personal Development |
There are 57 days to 2014.
That’s right. Only 57 days left till the beginning of the new year.
Ah, the new year. When we’ll start working on achieving those goals that we somehow let slip around mid-January this year. The big things we had planned to get done in 2013. All those changes we were going to make but never did.
You know what’s special about the number 57?
Nothing.
The reality is that it’s an arbitary number. Even the first of January is, in reality, an arbitary day. The fact of the matter is, the best time to start working on all those things is today. Just start. Today.
However, as humans we tend to like clean starts, and the beginning of a new year feels like a good point to recalibrate and start again.
So you know what’s really special about the next 57 days?
It’s enough time to reflect, assess, set goals and commit.
Reflect
Stop and think about what you really want. Perhaps you might want to get all spiritual and ponder the meaning of life and your place in the universe. If you’ve already done that and it’s all clear to you, perhaps you can think about what makes you happy. Maybe its your family, your health, your work, or the windowsill herb garden you’re growing. As Stephen Covey put it, is your ladder against the right wall?
Assess
Now that you know what makes you happy, take stock of how much time and effort you currently put into it. Do you spend your days working towards it? Are your actions aligned to your values?
If the answer is yes, then that’s good. The next question then is, “are you doing enough?”
If the answer is no, then … well … perhaps you might want to think about making some changes. You might decide that the timing is wrong or you’ve got other things going on, but that just means you actually value those other things more.
Set goals
All the literature and NLP techniques talk about this being the single most important factor to achieve success, but strangely enough, lots of people don’t take the time to do it. That, or they do it rather poorly. Here are a couple of ideas that should help.
BHAG
A BHAG (pronounced bee-hag) is a Big, Hairy Audacious Goal. BHAGs are most commonly associated with business visions, missions and strategies, but I’ve found them to be a great personal tool as well. Let your imagination run wild. Go large. Just make sure it’s somewhat associated with reality.
SMART
If you don’t know what a SMART goal is, then seriously, you’ve been living under a rock. Or watching too much TV. Or playing too much Angry Birds. Or potentially all three at the same time. But just in case you have, here is what it means:
Specific: Not vague. Your goal can’t be to just get better or to lose weight or be smarter.
Measurable: Quantifiable. You need to be able to put objective metrics in place to figure out whether you’ve making headway or not.
Attainable: Has to be realistic. This is the reality-check component of a goal.
Relevant: The goal has be related to your values. You can’t have a goal of eating a kilo of chocolates per week if your goal is to start a Purple Bandana business. (Okay, it may make you feel good so you can sell more Purple Banadanas. Maybe.)
Time-bound: The goal has to have a time frame to it, otherwise it just keeps going on and eventually falling by the wayside. This also helps to size goals. Big ones might take years, small ones only days.
Iterate between the two
If you think about the two goal setting tools above, they are examples of divergent and convergent thinking. The BHAG makes you think big and go wide, while the SMART goals make you focus. Iterating through them a few times will get you to a point where you have one or more BHAGs which translate into SMART goals.
Commit
It is one thing to figure out where you are and create goals, and altogether another to commit to them. Just because you have spent the time to drill down and plan out what you’ve going to do doesn’t mean that you have emotionally bought off on the idea of actioning those things. It’s a separate step, and need to be consciously implemented.
Also remember that unless you live on an island, committing to goals can (and usually does) require on-boarding other people. This could be your significant other, family, friends, and / or work colleagues who will be impacted by your actions. You will find that some of your goals may actually be unrealistic if you haven’t considered their impact on the other people in your life.
While quietly committing to your goals in your mind is great, it’s the public commitment that makes most people stick to them. I don’t necessarily mean public as in broadcasting it to the whole world – although that can also work – but rather to people other than yourself. This public commitment means you tell others that you are focussed on a goal, and you want them to hold you accountable for it.
57 days to go.
Plenty of time to do this.
Reflect. Assess. Set goals. Commit.
Get ready. 2014 is coming. You have no excuses.
On 1 January, it’s Hammertime. (I know. I went there).
Nov 1, 2013 | Career, Management |
Performance appraisals are generally uncomfortable events.
Not just when its my performance that is being reviewed, but also when I’m doing the reviewing. Having said that, I recognise it as an integral part of people management, and without such evaluations it would be impossible to help people develop and move forward in their careers.
Facilitating great business outcomes while enabling people to do interesting, meaningful and challenging work is essentially is what people management is about. If you can focus the conversation on how to progress someone’s career rather than what they’ve done well or otherwise, you actually have a shot at engaging them.
Engagement – one of the ultimate management goals – leads to discretionary effort.
Discretionary effort is what people choose to put into an activity, above and beyond what they are required to.
So how does one go about making performance appraisals a more comfortable event, which can in turn bring about more engagement? Here are some ways that I find helpful.
Not an annual event.
For starters, make the frequency contingent on how much support your staff need to get where they and you want to get to. Some people need lots of discussion and help, some just need little nudges. Figure out where they’re at, agree to a cadence, and stick to it.
Even if you catch up with them once a quarter, it feels a lot less burdensome than a massive career chat once a year.
Also important to note is this is only the committed schedule. If you or they feel like they are going through a challenging situation or are undertaking a stretch assignment, make time to give them extra attention.
Remove the formality.
Make the conversation as informal as you can. A performance appraisal should be a two-way conversation – meaning both parties need to be relaxed and comfortable speaking their minds for it to be effective. Generally this can’t happen in a rigidly formal setting.
If you can do it outside your office, great! If you can do it over coffee, even better. It breaks the ice and turns it into a friendly chat rather than an assessment.
If you need to sit in your office behind your desk in an authoritative position to feel confident, then perhaps you should re-think your career in people management.
Focus on them.
The best way to engage anyone is to answer the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) question for them. Most people I review don’t ever explicitly ask it, and its obvious some have never actually even thought about it. It is however quite helpful to frame the conversation around this so it becomes about them, their career path and their growth rather than a box-checking exercise.
Obviously, all of this has to occur within the context of your business operating environment and your team’s long and short term goals. There’s not much value dwelling on someone’s aspirations to become a world class, full time acrobat in a travelling circus if their primary role at work is project manager.
Use failures as lessons learned.
As I mentioned earlier, the best way to deal with failures and setbacks is to learn from them. A lack of failures and setbacks means someone isn’t really trying to push themselves out of their comfort zone.
Within reason and accepted thresholds, accept and appreciate risk-taking and failures, and provide a safe environment for people to do so. Really interesting and innovative ideas start to surface when people’s constraints are removed and they feel that their manager has their back.
Use weaknesses as opportunities.
Pointing out someone’s weaknesses – even if they are aware of and acknowledge them – isn’t very motivating. Instead, use the issue to have a conversation about the importance of addressing the weaknesses, what potential obstacles may be causing or exacerbating them, and what the path to improvement could be.
Framing the issue this way enables you to change the conversation from one where someone has to defend themselves to one where they are interested in exploring how to get better.
Be honest and transparent.
This goes without saying, but as the old proverb goes, “honesty is the best policy”. If you use lies and deception to extract performance out of people, you will eventually get found out, and the resulting disengagement and resentment will come back to bite you.
If career progression opportunities exist, are real, and are achievable, then that’s great. If they don’t, then do the right thing and let people know.
There are, of course, sensitive matters that you may not be able to fully disclose. Barring those, the more information you can provide to people, the better decisions they (and you) can make. Sometimes those decisions will result in them leaving, but that’s usually a good outcome for everyone involved.
Ask for feedback.
There’s not much point trying to get better at something without getting feedback about it. Apply the same principle to yourself, and get feedback about how the appraisal process feels and works (or doesn’t) for everyone else.
If you’ve made the effort to genuinely help others, given them time and attention, and acted honestly and transparently, most people will trust you and reciprocate with real feedback to improve the process – and your skill at implementing it.
So there it is. Certainly not a comprehensive list, but some of the ways I’ve found to make the conversation more meaningful and effective. Done the right way, performance appraisals can actually be something you and your staff can look forward to.
What are your strategies to making the performance appraisal process better?
Oct 29, 2013 | Career, Miscellaneous |
Caught up with my friend Ben Issa over lunch today, and the conversation turned to the choices we make while we traverse our career paths.
While we discussed what we had done over the years, the people we had worked with and the successes (and disappointments) we had faced, I mentioned that there were some things I regretted doing in hindsight. Things I had said, decisions I had made, choices I had implemented. Some had a small, almost inconsequential impact at the time but I still remember them as subtly shaping my life, while others looked catastrophic but in the long run eventuated to nothing.
Ben, however, reminded me of a better perspective:
“Don’t regret anything. Just learn from it and move on.”
Wise words.
Regret is a negative emotion. It just holds you back, pulls you down and makes you wallow in the past.
Learning means accepting your mistakes, acknowledging your shortcomings, and internalising the wisdom to not repeat them.
This is, in fact, also what Stephen Covey advocates:
“Stop wasting time regretting what you did a year ago. Start doing what you have to do now, so that in a year’s time you won’t regret what you did today.”
When we’re in the grind, we often lose sight of the most basic principles of success, and rather than learn from our mistakes, we only dwell on them. Sometimes it just takes a meaningful chat with a friend to recalibrate our compass.
Thanks Ben. Always a pleasure talking to you.
Oct 28, 2013 | Events |
I had the lunch hour available, so I took the opportunity to get to the AGSM CBD campus and attend the Learn@Lunch session on Thursday, 24 October. The lecture was titled “Competing in the New Innovation-Driven Global Economy: Opportunities and Challenges for Australia and Asia“, and was delivered by Professor Joseph Cheng.
Dr Cheng is a Professor of Management and the Michael J. Crouch Chair in Innovation in the Australian School of Business at UNSW. He recently arrived in Sydney from Chicago, where he was Professor of International Business and Director of The CIC Center for Advanced Study in International Competitiveness at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The premise of the talk was a rather interesting observation by the McKinsey Global Institute in their June 2012 report titled “Urban world: Cities and the rise of the consuming class“:
“Until 1500, Asia was the center of gravity of the world economy, accounting for roughly two-thirds of the global GDP. But in the 18th and 19th centuries, urbanization and industrialization vaulted Europe and the United States to prominence. We are now observing a decisive shift in the balance back towards Asia – at a speed and on a scale never before witnessed. China’s economic transformation resulting from urbanization is happening at 100 times the scale of the first country in the world to urbanize – the United Kingdom – and at ten times the speed.”
Given this scenario, what are the opportunities available to Australia to successfully compete and remain relevant in the region?
Dr Cheng pointed out that the way forward was economic growth based on innovation rather than efficiency, and spent some time contrasting the two models and providing numerous examples of each. He also distinguished between the different types of innovations that occur, and how organisations have used them to change their industries and gain competitive advantages.
He talked about the competitive advantages available to Australia – such as its strategic geographic location between the growing Asian powerhouses on one side and the emerging economies in the Americas on the other – as well as it being considered a safe and attractive place to live. He also observed some of the challenges it faced, such as being one of the countries that facilitated the on-going patent battles in its courts system and the generally risk-averse national culture, both of which are seen to stifle innovation.
In this context, he suggested that Australia could create competitive differentiation by becoming a centre of innovation, using its location to entice innovative individuals and organisations to establish themselves here, as well as becoming an innovation broker between the two emerging economic powers on either side.
It was a very insightful presentation indeed, and unfortunately I had to dash off back to work and miss the Q&A session which looked like it was going to be quite … vigourous. The AGSM staff indicated that a recording of the session will be available, so I’ll update this post with some links when I get access to it. The McKinsey report is also worth reading, and is freely available on their site.
