Quality Goal Setting

Performance year has started. As a manager, you need to go about setting goals for your team members.

You think ‘what all are goes into a quality goal setting process? Who are stakeholders and what are their roles?’

A quality goal setting process should ensure alignment of individual, team, and organization goals, SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic/Relevant, and Time Bound) goals, and ownership of goals from employee.

It is important for stakeholders to understand their roles in order to ensure these objectives are achieved.

·        Manager – ensures linkage between organization and team/individual goals; plays a large role in ensuring conditions that enables employees to own their goals; ensures balance in workload across team members; and ensures synchronicity between work of different team members.

·        Employees- play a role in charting out milestone based execution plans for goals, identifying additional individual goals that further team’s work, and understanding how they need to support each other to achieve team’s goals.

What are the conditions that ensure ownership of goals from employees?  A feeling of ‘these are my goals’ might help here. Such a feeling will be an outcome of active participation in entire goal setting process.

So managers also have to ensure platforms that enable active participation of employees in goal setting process – both at a team level and at an individual level.

 

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Sourav

 

Onboarding

Is it an employee’s responsibility to onboard himself/herself on to the role or is the company’s responsibility to ensure that an employee onboards to a role?

 

I will contend both. But I do think that organization has a role to play in ensuring the employee is set up for success.

 

First, both external and internal hires have a need for onboarding.

 

Second, an onboarding plan needs to have defined objectives and a structure.

 

Objectives of onboarding primarily are a) establishing relationships with key stakeholders in/outside organization, b) understanding organization eco-system, c) learning the nuts and bolts to do the job independently, and d) starting to contribute in the role (with quick feedback loops) that in turn leads to increased confidence.

 

How do you want to go about building a structure around these 3 pronged objectives?

First, set a time limit for plan– a fortnight/1 month/2 months.

Second, create a week wise plan with defined objectives.

Third, have a review/check-in mechanism in place with employee’s manager.

 

Finally, a plan is only as good as its execution. So ensure that onboarding plan is executed well.

 

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Sourav

Triad of learning

Is an individual responsible for his/her own learning? Most of us will contend yes.

But then what are responsibilities of other 2 stakeholders in process- manager and HR?

Other day I heard someone delineate succinctly the responsibilities.

'Employee owns, manager supports, and HR enables learning'.

Statement sounds simple and relevant! It resonates with me.

But how might this state manifest at workplace?

Employee will own initial identification of learning need and sharing same with manager.

Manager will explore along with the employee whether the correct need has been identified or not (e.g.- by using evidence procedure), facilitate effective choice of 70/20/10 learning mix, work with stakeholders (including HR) on ensuring relevant 70/20/10 learning opportunities materialize, and provide opportunities for transfer of learning back to workplace (for 20 and 10 percent).

HR supports the manager being  more effective in supporting employee through learning process.

But HR's also plays a role is enabling the process. So HR person needs to have an understanding/independent view on how process is running and intervene if process is stuck somewhere- with employee or manager.

But then HR's role is akin to a tight rope walk- you have to enable the employee and manager to drive the process and not to take over ownership of the process.

I also do feel manager has a role to play in enablement. Manager can clear log jams if s/he finds employee stuck somewhere.

A related point is that employee/manager may be stuck at what, when/where, how, or why of learning. A skill in 'enablement' is to figure out where is block/log jam and accordingly facilitate the process.

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Sourav

 

 

 

Participation

‘You can take a horse to the water- you can tell horse drinking water  is good for its health -but choice to drink or not to drink water lies with the horse'. This is a statement that I had formed early in my career when I was working on learning and development space.

Over last few months I have realized that this statement is applicable to situations/processes where the efforts and results are not linearly related in space and time and area spread out across time. Career Planning & Execution, and Development are 2 such processes – you make efforts today but results may not come in the same year.

My new tagline on careers is – ‘Performance is ensured over a year while a career direction is built at least over 2-3 years’.

We harp on relevance- we learn or we work towards a career goal if it is relevant for us. We say that the challenge for the resource provider or the manager is to create a space/opportunity for employee to find relevance for him/her.

Let’s say that as a resource provide you have done work on both fronts mentioned above-you and employee have figure out relevant aspects and you have provided required resources.

And then - employee resists turning up to utilize the resource! You are left perplexed! What happened?

Maybe it is relevant but other priorities are at play.

I had been working on creating for last few months a program – working along with intended audience to ensure relevance of resources. On day of session, we clocked around 50% attendance. I wondered whether we could have had at least 60% attendance – that’s what I had expected. But maybe that’s the wrong way to look at this situation. Those who attended seemed vested and involved in day and shared that they found session very valuable.

I saw them taking notes and thinking of how they will make use of learning's back at work.

Leaves me thinking – should we work on participation?

Sometimes we need to drive participation - to ensure people prioritize A over B where both are relevant and where they may not have realized importance/power of A. This is especially the case when A is career/development and B is performance.

Low participation undermines power of an initiative. High participation does not guarantee effectiveness. Relevance is critical.

Hence both relevance and participation are necessary but not sufficient resources by themselves. They go hand in hand to ensure success.

If required participation can be driven. If people choose to stay on as day progresses, that's a possible indication that efforts were worth it.

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Sourav

Excellent Managers

What are enablers for managerial excellence?

Let’s make an assumption - focus of excellence is on what managers are doing today.

Hence focus becomes - what are HR processes manager is supposed to manage for his/her directs.  Some of these processes are across employee life cycle (e.g - joining, onboarding, development) some across team life cycle (e.g- storming, forming, norming).

I've come across two ways of ensuring this focus.

• Organization clarifies what is expected of Managers and measures them on basis of outcomes (subjective or objective).
• Organization institutes project teams to drive outcomes/improvements related to focus.

Both ways can work. In the first way, consistency in outcomes across managers may be a challenge.  In the second way, there is a danger that responsibility for managing is abdicated – responsibility for managerial outcomes is perceived to have moved to project teams.

But obviously, managerial outcomes still need to emerge from Managers doing the right thing for their employees.

That's a focus one has to maintain in the second way.

 

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Sourav

 

Equivalence of Goals & Rewards!

What´s most important step in performance Management? Goal setting – obviously!  You get goal setting process wrong, and all subsequent process steps possibly can´t correct damage done.

Should incumbents of similar jobs have equivalent difficulty of goals? 

Well! This situation might lead to one employee having a better chance of making an impact compared to another employee, & consequently get a better rating.

So what do we do? We have to be fair to employees!

I see 2 possible ways of addressing such a situation.

•  We could have a manager playing moderator role – ensuring equivalent (comparable) jobs having equivalent difficulty of goals.   
• We could also let imbalance in goals exist.

o  But then we have to ensure that the process is not deemed unfair. A significant portion of fairness/unfairness lies in allocation of rewards on basis of performance -  what is the rating used for  - how it impacts compensation/next year´s assignments/career moves also needs to be taken care of.  Since goals are for year, hence differentiation of rewards on basis of performance should also be short term (e.g. – bonus for the year, merit increase for the year, etc) and not long term (e.g. –career moves, succession plans,  etc).

But then,  I feel that non-equivalence of goals can be a by-product (something that happens because of changes in environmental conditions in year).  

At goal setting stage, equivalence of goals should be attempted, and that is a managerial prerogative.  This is important, because as humans we always strive for an equal chance to be unequals- and we trust our managers to provide that equal chance.

It is possible that even after this equal chance, the results across equivalent level employees vary dramatically (in terms of business impact) for equal levels of effort.  Environmental changes might significantly tilt the playing ground towards one/some employees.

Again, as managers, we can either moderate the results (factoring in environmental difficulty) or rewards in terms of business impact.

In later case, linkage of rewards system to performance system has to be tweaked. Since the performance is for the year, we should also reward (on basis of performance) for the year – a reward that at most has an impact for a year´s time!

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Sourav

360 Degree Processes!

Over last few months, I facilitated 360 degree feedback process for a few employees.  

They have now received feedback reports and have undergone report debriefing sessions. While some of them seem to have accepted feedback & sound committed to working on them, some other seem compliant & a bit skeptical.

I´ve been thinking - ´As a 360 degree process facilitator, what are things I should/should not focus on?´.

·        Why does an employee want to undergo a 360 degree process?  In this case, the manager had suggested process to employees. I realized employees were enthusiastic, neutral, or skeptical about undergoing process.  I wondered ´Did manager commit a mistake by asking his employees to undergo process? Can these conditions lead to ownership of development process by employee?´ I don´t think manager committed a mistake by suggesting/recommending process. Necessary condition is that the employee feels need for undergoing the process.  How we get to that state is immaterial.

·        When might it be useful for an employee to undergo a 360 degree process?  I think an employee might consider undergoing the process after s/he has spent reasonable time (probably about a year) in a 'new stakeholder network'. This new stakeholder network might arise out of a role change, change in external stakeholder groups, etc.

·        What is feedback used for? If feedback will be used for performance/career decisions, then state it so. If it used for development decisions, then state it so. In either case, follow principle in letter and spirit. 360 degree process becomes dysfunctional when there is divergence between stated intent and actual practice. In previous case, an employee works on feedback because his career is at stake. In later case s/he works on feedback because s/he feels ownership for what´s expressed. Later case is preferred (there would be less ´forced performance´) but either case can bring about movement.

·        Who do we take feedback from? Do we choose only those who are like us (& hence might like us)? Are we willing to take risk to reach out to those who may be neutral about us too?

·        How do we deal with feedback? One frame of reference to look at feedback from is 'How are our actions being interpreted/perceived?´. In this frame, how our actions are interpreted matters more than our actions. Do we have control on way our actions are interpreted? I am not sure of that. But I do think we need to take responsibility for way our actions are interpreted.  When we start thinking about our actions and intentions, defenses might rise up. Under such circumstance, accepting feedback and working on same becomes difficult.

·        An employee signed up for 360 degree process, got his report, and underwent debriefing session too. What next? Where does process go from here? I think it is about whether employee is creating a development plan that has buy in of his superior (where would resources come from?)and is committing to any actions around same.  If these two things are happening, feedback process is possibly producing its outcome.

Have you experienced a 360 degree process? How was your experience like? What works and what does not?

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Sourav

Feedback

What role does feedback play in Performance Management?  To answer this question, we´l l have to first answer a more fundamental question ´How does a manager arrive at a proposed rating for an employee?´

A Manager relies on his own judgment & employee´s self assessment– that´s what I have been used to seeing for a long time.

But in new context, I find that a manager additionally relies heavily on feedback received from others. There even is a feedback framework in place – employees use a feedback tool to request feedback and to give feedback.  Tool sees heavy 2 way traffic.  

So why do I see this change?

I think 2 primary reasons are:

·         Ecosystem -  I frequently hear here word ecosystem being used to describe number & variety of stakeholders one works with.  The circle of interaction and influence is not only within your team and teams/leaders you support. It is a matrix structure. Number of stakeholders potentially impacted is fairly higher than in a functional role based setup.

·         Manager´s role description– Most Managers here have a healthy mix of People Management and Individual contributor responsibilities. A Manager is accountable for his own performance and his team´s performance. Hence need for a Manager to balance his time.

Given these 2 realities, a feedback tool seems relevant to provide a manager more holistic visibility about his reportee´s performance.

Would such a tool be relevant for setups where above mentioned 2 realities are not so prevalent?

Manager´s judgment is paramount. But feedback is necessary to enable manager to take a better decision. So a feedback tool may not be necessary, but a feedback framework – on how employees request, give, & receive feedback – does make sense for all setups.

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Sourav

Feedback on a Situation!

Something happened post Focussed Group Discussion (FGD) i was facilitating yesterday that has stayed with me.

I was discussing with the 'People Manager' concerned about what had been the major themes that had come out of the FGD.

I was telling the manager concerned what the group felt about how we could better structure/use in-person interactions (individual discussions between the manager and reportee's). I shared 'What they wanted more/less/started/stopped during these discussions?'.

Initial reaction of manager concerned was defensiveness. At one point, s/he expressed 'This is an unfair demand from me!'

His/her reaction made me aware of something i had forgot to make him/her aware about. My discussion with team was about 'what needed to change in the situation?' and was not about 'what the manager needed to do differently?'.

The subsequent question obviously is 'If these are the changes we want, who needs to do what differently? What would you need to do differently?'

Once i made manager aware that the focus of the discussion was on the situation and not the person, i sensed s/he became more receptive to looking at the feedback objectively.

I realize that the next conversation i need to have with his/her group would be around 'What does each stakeholder -manager and employee - needs to do what differently to achieve changes envisaged in individual conversations?'

Feedback is difficult to accept if we view it as 'feedback on us'. Feedback is easier to accept, if we view it as 'feedback on a situation in which we are one of the parties involved' - probably it is also a more constructive way to look at a situation.

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Sourav