Every manager knows that “No man is an island”, that “No battle is won alone” and that There is no "I" in Team.
Great!
But what does it mean?
And how can you get your people to work towards the same goals?
Consistently and over time?
Let me start by sharing the story of how I came across the method I’ve sworn to for high performance in teams over the last seven years.
It all started when the Managing Director at the time introduced the management group to something he called The Performance Interview (PI).
This was a one-to one meeting between the manager and the employee, it was to take place every four weeks and would cover both quantitative as well as qualitative issues. Nothing new there… But, as a foundation for all these Performance Interviews were some clearly defined goals/drivers for the company. Take these high level goals, and let each department brainstorm what they mean to them, let them come up with a lot of ideas as to how they can contribute. Then you let each person pick and define 3-4 of these “actions” per quarter. The “actions” are called MBO’s – Management By Objectives. The real beauty is that all the MBO’s help the company to reach their high level goals, while each employee have concrete actions developing both themselves as well as the company.
In 2012 we had a total of 254 approved MBO’s in the company, can you imagine the power and distributed ownership this represents?
It is the brilliant late Peter Drucker, who defined management as “the ability to convert effort into performance” that is considered the “father” of the Performance Interview. He researched what factors determine a persons high performance over time.
They are:
- Tell me what you expect of me.
- Give me opportunities to perform the work.
- Tell me how I do underway.
- Help me, when and where I need it.
- Evaluate and reward my efforts fairly.
All of the success criteria mentioned above are made easier if you use MBO’s and Performance Interviews, it gives you an ideal arena for developing your most priced resources – your people.
How are you creating high performers?
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