Do Business Well

Each manager’s routine was different, reflecting his or her unique style. Nonetheless, hidden within this diversity we found four characteristics common to the “performance management” routines of great managers.

First, the routine is simple. Great managers dislike the complexity of most company-sponsored performance appraisal schemes. They don’t want to waste their time trying to decipher the alien terms and to fill out bureaucratic forms. Instead they prefer a simple format that allows them to concentrate on the truly difficult work: what to say to each employee and how to say it.

Second, the routine forces frequent interaction between the manager and the employee. It is no good meeting once a year, or even twice a year, to discuss an employee’s performance, style, and goals. The secret to helping an employee excel lies in the details: the details of his particular recognition needs, of his relationship needs, of his goals, and of his talents/nontalents. A yearly meeting misses these details. It degenerates into a bland discussion about “potential” and “opportunities for improvement.” The only way to capture the details is to meet at a minimum once a quarter, sometimes even more frequently.

At these meetings the specifics of a success or a disappointment are fresh in the memory. The employee can talk about how a particular meeting or interaction made him “feel.” The manager can recall the same meeting and suggest subtle changes in approach or a different way of interpreting the same event. The conversation can be vivid, the advice practical. Furthermore, in the intervening weeks between meetings the manager and the employee are motivated to concentrate on events as they occur, because each knows that a forum for discussing these events will soon arise. Frequent performance meetings force both manager and employee to pay attention. (If you are worried about the time drain inherent in frequent performance meetings, remember that the best managers spend, on average, only one hour per quarter per person discussing performance.)

Furthermore, frequent performance meetings make it so much easier to raise the always sensitive subject of the employee’s areas of poor performance. If you meet only once or twice a year, you are forced to drop your criticisms on the employee all at once, like a bomb. When the employee inevitably recoils, you then have to dredge your memory for examples to support your argument. But by meeting frequently, you can avoid this battle of wills. You can introduce areas of poor performance little by little over time, and each time you raise the subject, you can refer to recent, vivid examples. Your criticisms will be easier to swallow and the conversation more productive.

Third, the routine is focused on the future. Great managers do use a review of past performance to highlight discoveries about the person’s style or needs. However, their natural inclination is to focus on the future. They want to discuss what “could be,” rather than allowing the conversation to descend into recriminations and postmortems that lead nowhere. Therefore, while the first ten minutes of the meeting may be used for review, the rest of the time is devoted to the truly creative work: “What do you want to accomplish in the next few months? What measuring sticks will we use? What is your most efficient route toward those goals? How can I help?” In their view, these kinds of conversations are more energetic, more productive, and more satisfying.

Last, the routine asks the employee to keep track of his own performance and learnings. In many companies “performance appraisal” is something that happens to an employee. She is a passive observer, waiting to receive the judgment of her manager. If she is lucky, she may be asked to rate herself before she sees how the company rates her. But even here she is still reactive. She knows that the purpose of her self- assessment is to serve as a counterpoint or comparison with the assessment of her manager. So her self-assessment becomes a negotiating tool—”I’ll pitch mine high and we’ll probably end up somewhere in the middle”—rather than an honest evaluation of her own performance.

The best managers reject this. They want a routine that asks each employee to keep track of her own performance and learnings. They want her to write down her goals, her successes, and her discoveries. This record is not designed to be evaluated or critiqued by her manager. Rather, its purpose is to help each employee take responsibility for her performance. It serves as her mirror. It is a way to step outside herself. Using this record, she can see how she plans to affect the world. She can weigh the effectiveness of those plans. She can be accountable to herself.

Naturally, great managers want to discuss and agree to each employee’s short-term performance goals, but the rest of the record—her discoveries about herself, the descriptions of new skills she has learned, the letters of recognition she may have received—are part of a private document. If the employee is fortunate enough to have a trusting relationship with her manager, she may feel comfortable sharing the whole record—successes, failures, perceived strengths. But this is not the point of it. The point is to encourage the employee to keep track of her own performance and learnings. The point is self-discovery.

Recent research into adult learning reveals that students stay in school longer and learn more if they are expected to direct and record their progress. Great managers realized this long ago and now apply it with their employees.

These four characteristics—simplicity, frequent interaction, focus on the future, and self-tracking—are the foundation for a successful “performance management” routine. In the basic routine below we describe some of the questions many great managers ask to learn about their employees and the format they usually follow. Our purpose is not to tell you exactly what to say, or how to say it, or to whom, because that would be cumbersome and artificial—you will of course want to adapt the questions and tools to your own talent and experience.

However, if you follow this basic routine and incorporate it successfully into your own style, you will give yourself the best chance possible to define the right outcomes, to focus on strengths, and to help each person find the right fit.

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