Productivity improvement
However, we need to stand back and explore the reasons for this very poor scorecard on managers in general some of whom are not worth their salary. I have interacted with many high achieving directors, senior managers, and middle managers who wanted to develop their employees. They recognised that this was the most effective way of achieving higher productivity as well as creating a positive working environment. They introduced initiatives ranging from culture change to team building that were generally welcomed.
Yet they found that the results fell far short of their expectations. Many felt frustrated that parts of the culture and traditions appeared to actively negate every effort to improve performance. Therefore, however sincere their efforts were they usually fell far short of what they considered to be possible. This raised a number of questions about “why?” and the following insights emerged.
Flawed structural framework
In many hierarchical organisations the inherent structure is not designed to encourage high productivity due to being seriously flawed. There are a number of reasons for this and I will expand on the following three ineffective systems:
- Reward structure
- Development and promotion structure
- Manager development
Reward structure – With the exception of a few enlightened organisations the majority still reward employees using systems to place them in pay grades. I have yet to discover a grading system that actually takes account of the unique contribution of each and every employee. We are all different and therefore will contribute to our role in different ways that need to be identified and rewarded in relation to the performance outputs. Almost every employee knows that their pay has been put through what they call a ‘sausage machine’ process that produces packages that often bear little resemblance to the contribution made. This is one very serious area that needs to be addressed if organisations really want to improve productivity. When they have truly effective managers the accountability for payment would delegated to them from a pool of money directly related to the profitability and effectiveness of their efforts. When an effective performance review and reward system is in place it would go a long way to redress the significant inequality in rewards that we read about almost every day.
Development and promotion structure – it always amazes me the degree of effort that goes into succession and development planning that produces measurably limited outcomes. Some organisations have employed sophisticated computer programmes to manage performance and development. However they fail to recognise that the system is fundamentally designed to provide management with the comfort that it is at the cutting edge along with other similar organisations. It’s often more about ‘keeping up with the Jones’ than effectively identifying the talent that needs to be developed from the talent ready to take on more demanding challenges. It is unfortunate that many ‘systems’ are open to inappropriate influence by ineffective managers who introduce bias and skewed information into the process. Sometimes this information has severely dented or even blighted the careers of very promising talented people. One answer is to give accountability to effective managers to carry out performance and development reviews and to share their findings with other effective managers. In this way the knowledge of who should be developed and promoted is shared with a cadre of effective managers.
Manager development – tends to still follow a somewhat tradition pathway with a number of practices that are clearly out of kilter with the world or 2012. Here are three of the practices that are still preached in some training programmes, management books, and in universities.
- Avoid becoming friendly with your employees in case you need to reprimand or even fire them. I have heard this mantra expressed many times and it just does not make sense today. The opportunity a manager has is to become part of the team and to work closely with colleagues in a collegiate manner. In this way the whole team can be focused on the desired result with everyone pulling in the same direction. Being friendly and approachable is an asset for managers as this enables team members to openly deal with issues that may be affecting them. Being friendly is not about being ‘buddy-buddy’ in a close familiar manger it is about being able to relate effectively with all the team and other managers.
- Give praise only when the employee achieves exceptional performanceas they are paid for good performance and no praise is needed for that. This is often given as an excuse when managers are challenged about the paucity of their performance feedback. The reality is that some of them are unable even to accurately identify good performance by team members. This is exacerbated by the lack of an effective performance management system in some organisations.Feedback is the lifeblood of performance particularly when it is timely and clearly related to outcomes achieved by each person. All effective managers and team leaders know this fact and actively seek ways to provide accurate and timely feedback. They also are prepared to constructively confront poor performance. This is to assist the person to identify what needs to change in order for the desired performance to be achieved.
- Delegate only to the employees who have the skill to do the work required. This misses the point that delegating is one way of making the management role more effective. Delegating it is a great way to help empower employees; however, unfortunately it is often used to dump trivial, mundane, or difficult work on them. Effective delegation requires careful thinking and planning to ensure that the work delegated is actually used to develop a person’s skills and knowledge. Unfortunately the evidence indicates that many managers and team leaders are not trained to use delegation as a development tool it is designed to achieve.
Time for change
I outlined ideas that could enable organisations to transition from the less effective practices to more enabling ones in an earlier blog entitled ‘Cultivating Talent’. There is no doubt that by keeping doing the same things nothing will change therefore it is time to seek different and better ways of working that truly develop people. This is turn will help to improve performance with resulting increases in performance and profitability.
In my next blog I intend to focus on executive rewards, an issue that is creating a lot of heat at the moment due to the perception that it is grossly unfair.
If you have any comments to make I would appreciate hearing from you by either contacting me at tom.jaap@centell.org or leaving a comment on the blog.
Best wishes
Tom