New World Performance Management system
‘Heroic Leader’ is archaic. The world where a “heroic” leader could clearly give directions and ensure results from followers who were more compliant does not exist. From a world of followers, today we have transitioned into a very different world.
What is this different world?
A dynamic environment where One Brain company simply cannot survive. With Millennials forming major proportion of the workforce in most organisations, almost half the workforce is under the age bracket of 35 years. From being compliant, the employees today are independent and demonstrate more confidence than their predecessors. High performance and productivity are an imperative for survival in a competitive environment. Collaborative approach is the buzz. There is more need to voice opinions, have equal say, be heard, be transparent and be very fast and responsiveness. It is then not a great surprise that there is massive growth of everything that is collaborative in nature. Digitization has enabled this.
The old performance management system is passé. It does not fit in with the present business environment. The businesses exist to perform and the human capital are most critical in delivering this. The new world performance management system has arrived to shape the workforce in order to combat the new environment challenges.
New world performance management system
Focus of the new Performance Management System in most companies is to do away with rankings. However, the struggle for most companies continues through this major transition. The main change that is being seen more consistently is around collaborative planning for performance & development goals. In addition, more frequent and better quality conversation between the supervisor and team member is becoming the norm. Successful leaders can leverage these changes distinctly to the advantage of their team’s and organisation’s performance.
Leading the new performance management system
Behavior Focus
Behaviors have become critical to achieving results in fast paced change today. Even more critical is the adaptability with which each person needs to assess situations and alter behaviors as needed. Hence discussing end results or goals without focus on behaviors is unlikely to complete a performance discussion. Most Millennials -forming majority of the workforce- will not stay in a job for more than 3 years, hence, it will be an imperative to be tuned into their desires, motivators and behaviors rather than just defining their goals.
Commitment through engaging conversations
Leaders have always had challenges around motivating & engaging their people to commit to what is called discretionery effort. Research maintains that it is only a small percentage of people who are self-motivated. For the rest, conversations, discussions and dialogues are the opportunities to encourage and get commitment for extra effort. This holds even more for the millennials who have a need for varied and interesting careers (even portfolio careers) and constant feedback*. In an internal dipstick with Millennial Professionals – role clarity, guidance from manager and feedbacks on projects delivered – are recognised as the most important in enabling them to perform at work. The only way to keep the Millennials motivated is to develop skills of better quality conversations Performance accelerator and using these skills in frequent and meaningful conversations that both – build engagement and drive performance.
Higher Collaborative Organisation-are the new Heroes
With multi-generation workforce, ‘high collaboration’ behaviors continues to be a challenge. Collaborative work environment is now a confirmed prediction. Whether through extraneous force or through natural transition collaborative work environment is inevitable for the new performance management system to work and organisations to perform. In future competitiveness will only grow and high collaborative organisations will be mostly the ones successful in the marketplace. Successful leaders will make the transition from being heroic to collaborative leaders and will enable their organisations to transition into a “Heroic Organisation”.
*InspireOne Dipstick on “Engaging Millennial Professionals”
