Clarity.....the unsung hero of new performance management

The performance management ‘movement’ of the last 5 years has brought about welcome change in the way we think about, enable and manage performance. I have experienced first-hand how refreshing and impactful these new approaches are on organisational, team and personal performance.

Performance management is a set of interconnected, mutually reinforcing activities that enable people to be their best and the very foundation of successful performance management is clarity of expectations. Creating clarity through goal setting is the starting block for performance yet over the last few years, it’s had the least air time. We’ve focused on losing annual appraisals in favour of frequent conversations, we’ve tussled with de-coupling reward, we’ve engaged in debate about whether to rate or not to rate, we’ve created apps and intuitive performance systems and we’ve encouraged multi-source feedback. Yet without clear expectations, performance cannot be evaluated, measured, corrected or celebrated. We have of course seen changes in approaches to goal setting as part of the performance management movement but they have mostly been around the process of setting goals rather than addressing the age-old issue of quality goal setting and more crucially, goal commitment.

The case for investing in proper goal setting is clear. I came across an interesting piece of research recently by Sven Asmus and colleagues (2015), that showed that even without financial incentives, goal setting improved performance by 12 to 15%. The same piece of research described goals as ‘learning intensifiers’. They found that individuals with goals experienced a steeper, more intense learning curve than those who didn’t have them. Goals drive intrinsic motivation by providing focus and a sense of meaning and attainment. So why wouldn’t we invest proper time and effort in them?

Over the last 5 years, I’ve researched, designed and implemented new approaches to performance management and learned many lessons along the way. I have learned that to create the very best foundation for performance there must be an approach to goal setting that focuses on goal commitment, not just goal achievement. The effect of goal setting on performance and behaviour is likely to be greater and more positive, if the goal matters to the person working towards it. Goal commitment is the precursor to goal achievement. So, how do we achieve goal commitment?

Make it about the team….

Setting team goals is a practice many progressive organisations have adopted. In traditional performance management, individual goals derived from organisational goals and there was a chasm between the two making it difficult for people to feel connected to their goals. Team goals are a wonderful way of bridging that gap. The sense of being ‘in it together’, the interconnectedness of the team and collective approach to achievement helps people focus on what needs to be done and how it is done together.

Two years ago my team and I started setting team goals. We defined our team ‘focus’ and then agreed what our team goals would be. Each team member then worked with their manager to agree how they would contribute to the team goals. The performance and output of the team has not just improved, but the collegiate, cohesive way in which the team operates has lifted the performance and engagement of every team member. We have seen that the team goals lead to better communication and support and the positive team climate serves to enhance our team performance.

But keep it personal….

I’m a huge advocate of team goals but I am also a believer that goals need to be personal in order to get goal commitment. We are all unique and what is challenging and rewarding to one person may not be for another. This is why I am not an advocate of mass-produced goals that are cascaded through organisations. For goal commitment to be achieved, goals need to tailored and personalised.  Personalisation is partly about what is to be achieved but also how it is achieved and takes into consideration each individual’s personal drivers, preferences and strengths. Two people may have the same goal but how the goal is articulated or achieved should be tailored to each individual.  The theory of purposeful work is an interesting piece of work by Murray Barrick and his colleagues (2013) as they propose that differences in personality lead to different motivational drivers, for example, a person with high openness to experience is likely to engage with goals that are varied and autonomous, that provide opportunities to experience new things. A person with high agreeableness may want to achieve goals where working with others and building relationships are paramount.  Personalising goals drives purpose, meaning and therefore intrinsic motivation. 

Co-create and co-refine….

I’ve carried out many focus groups to gather employee feedback on performance management and when we get to goal setting, I hear the same themes time and again:

“It’s a tick box exercise”

“I don’t pay any attention to them”

“We put them into the system and I don’t look at them again until appraisal time”

“My manager just writes them, I have no input” 

When you dig deeper, two issues drive this feedback, managers write and assign goals with no input from the individual and they are not reviewed regularly as part of ongoing performance conversations. Goals quickly become irrelevant and redundant and people are less likely to feel ownership for goals they’ve had no part in crafting. The solution is very simple, co-create goals and keep reviewing refining (together) regularly, this leads to greater goal commitment and focus. 

Think impact...

This is a bit controversial, but I am not a fan of the SMART model of goal setting. It is incredibly difficult to argue with, don’t get me wrong. Goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timebound but sometimes it’s just not possible to meet all of those requirements while having a goal that engages and motivates. The quest for making a goal SMART, detracts from the very essence of what goal setting is about which is to define “what impact do I want to make and what am I going to do to achieve it?” That’s where our attention and focus needs to be. Investing time in defining and refining the desired impact and change is what will drive goal commitment and the secondary (SMART-type) questions follow ensuring it gets done.

If you are a leader who has responsibility for the performance of a team or you are an organisation that is considering transforming your performance management approach, remember, clarity of expectations is one part of the process but it is the bedrock, the foundation of successful performance management. Great goal setting not only leads to great performance but it cultivates positive cultures and engages people and teams.