For Immediate Release:
Dateline: Washington,
DC
Friday, March 11, 2016
The Office of Personnel Management defines..." to "Three Key Ideas for Managing Performance"In a recent article in ATD’s The Public Manager, I shared insights about why the federal performance management process has so many challenges despite seeming continuous efforts to improve the process. There is certainly plenty of blame to go around for why the process is so flawed – not the least of which being Title 5 of the Constitution. Most Americans probably do not realize that the annual performance management process for government employees is actually codified in law. While agencies have some flexibility in how they implement the regulations, there is a Constitutional framework within which the agencies must design their processes. The legal framework is intended to protect employees against illegal and discriminatory talent management practices while providing general guidance for agencies in implementing systems that afford opportunities to make and reward meaningful distinctions in performance.Following are three general ideas updated just a bit from those I put forward in the ATD article mentioned above: - Select and retain the right supervisors. We now have solid and consistent empirical evidence that ties employee engagement to the relationship with the first level supervisors, so hiring and retaining excellent supervisors is paramount to any effort to improve performance management. The challenge for many organizations will be how to shift their models of promoting exceptional technicians into managerial and supervisory positions to a model that identifies and develops individuals who are capable, competent, and committed to lead. A good technician does not necessarily a good manager make. Hiring models must reflect an awareness of this basic truth.
- Engage employees in the performance management process. Performance management should be continual throughout the performance cycle – well beyond the typical mid-year and end-of-year documented discussions. There are a number of opportunities throughout the year to engage employees in conversations about how to improve performance – at the individual, team, and organizational level. When employees are involved in setting goals and see how their performance ties into the organization’s overall performance, they are considerably more likely to be committed to and fully engaged in meeting the goals.
- Make small adjustments. Too often, organizations bite off more than they should try to chew when it comes to change initiatives. Identifying incremental changes and actively engaging employees in the implementation increases the probability that the change effort will be successful. As a senior government leader in mission support functions, I accomplished so much by leveraging the “pilot” concept. I would do a small test, collect some relevant data about the broader initiative I wanted to implement, make appropriate adjustments to the implementation plan – and then launch. This rapid small-scale experimentation permits low-risk innovation, and a fast "fail/learn/tweak" cycle that results in more robust program implementation. We don’t always have the luxury of extended time frames to get things done but this approach, borrowed from the Lean movement, increases the likelihood you'll get it right the first time, thereby avoiding the need to correct a flawed implementation.
For additional ideas more specific to the performance management cycle, please see my Slide Share presentation – one version delivered for U.S. audiences and a slightly different version for Turkish audiences. |
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