Raw Courage Drives Workplace Performance

“What’s wrong with everyone nowadays? What is it that makes everyone seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their technical capabilities?” – Prince Charles, heir to the throne of 16 Commonwealth nations.

Many years ago when I was in grade-school, we used to hate getting our report cards.  Mostly because they were perceived as a testament to our inadequacies.  More recently, we stopped telling children they needed to improve at anything, so every child is wonderful at everything.  It apparently helps their self-esteem.  We’ll just ignore the fact for now, that the reality of a big, bad world is going to clip these poor kids in the head like a drunk Edward Scissor-Hands at the beauty parlor.

When I progressed on to post-secondary education, I was introduced to the rather Darwinian concept of the grading curve – the quality of your work didn’t matter as much as how it compared to others.  Such methods of evaluation were brutal in their own way.  They were also very instructional.  I got used to the idea early that I was very average at just about everything I did.  It also meant the one or two things (and not many more) I was truly good at, I could leverage to my advantage.

I don’t think kids coming up today will have that same advantage.  They expect to be told they great at everything, which they are not.

Of course, this is already wreaking havoc in the workplace.

Performance Appraisals have become a ridiculous exercise to keep the HR folks off our backs, rather than something that will drive the performance of an organization.  Every employee survey tells us that people want more feedback.  In reality, they want more positive feedback.  Corrective feedback is about as welcome as Ike at the Tina Turner fan club meeting.

Yet, one thing that the few truly great organizations do consistently is provide honest and regular feedback both informally, and in the form of Performance Appraisals.  The one truly great manager I had when I had a real job, was also the guy who was brutal in his assessment of me.  He could have taken the easy way out, and given me a rosy review that would have changed nothing.

It’s a courage that is as rare as steak tartar; but is also the only thing that will drive improved performance.

Performance appraisals don’t have to be a painful, time-wasting exercise done simply to satisfy HR.  We show you how exactly how to conduct a performance appraisal so its more than just a report card, and leads to the behavior changes you want to see in your employees.  Become a member and get instant access.

Writing Performance Appraisals

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Writing Performance Appraisals is a required job of every manager, that few enjoy doing.  When done well, Writing Performance Appraisals can drive performance of both individuals and of the organization.  Below we talk about:

  • Why Bother Writing Performance Appraisals
  • Key Actions When Writing Performance Appraisals
  • Potential Pitfalls When Writing Performance Appraisals

Why Bother Writing Performance Appraisals

In some organizations, Writing Performance Appraisals is so painful, that the question is asked whether they are worth doing at all.  Consider the following:

  • Feedback is critical to success.  People need to know how they are doing and where they stand.
  • Performance Appraisals are often painful, and done poorly.  It doesn’t have to be this way.
  • When done properly, Performance Appraisals can drive, and drastically improve performance.

Key Actions When Writing Performance Appraisals

  1. Form the Foundation
  2. Make Performance Appraisals Part of Ongoing Feedback
  3. Make Performance Appraisals Future Oriented
  4. Conduct Your Appraisal Meeting

Form the Foundation

  • Make Performance Appraisals consistent with other documents – use the same definitions and competencies in all documents.  For example, it makes no sense to have one set of criteria on a Job Description, and another on a Performance Appraisal.
  • Articulate clear goals and expectations.  People need to know and understand well in advance what they will be evaluated on.  Show them the forms and the rating system significantly in advance of the Performance Appraisal meeting.
  • Define the performance criteria.  Managers must not say, “Be Organized”.  There need to be behavioral descriptions of what “organized” means.
  • Use measures where possible.  Not everything is easily measured, but every attempt should be made to use objective, measurable criteria where it exists.
  • Support with examples or behavioral descriptions wherever possible.

Make Performance Appraisals part of Ongoing Feedback

Managers must offer feedback more than one or twice a year during Performance Appraisals.  Feedback must be continuous, and be informal as well as formal.

  • There should be no surprises on Performance Appraisals.
  • Performance and feedback should be discussed at manager – employee one on ones regularly.
  • Communicate about the Performance Appraisal process.  Tell people what to expect, and show them the forms to be used.
  • Choose your timing.  In some cases Writing Performance Appraisals is attached to the calendar.  In other cases, managers have discretion as to when they are conducted.  Do what is most appropriate for your situation.

Make Performance Appraisals Future Oriented

The less a Performance Appraisal feels like a report card, the easier it will be for all parties.

  • The past doesn’t count.  You cannot change past performance, but you can learn from it.  Use the past only as a guide to improve for the future.
  • Overcome employee resistance.  The manager needs to facilitate a conversation that will ultimately improve performance.  This is much easier if the employee is not defensive and angry.
  • Tie very closely to development plans.  Again – future performance is what counts.  For this reason, Performance Appraisals and Development Plans should be very closely linked, and highly correlated.

Conduct Your Meeting

The Performance Appraisal meeting should be much easier if the manager has followed the steps above.

  • Before the meeting:
    • Let employees know what to expect
    • Have them fill out the forms themselves, so you can compare notes during the meeting.
    • Envision the entire meeting beforehand.  Prepare responses to any pushback you may get.  Also prepare tangible examples to support the ratings.
  • During:
    • The Manager should ask lots of questions
    • Be consultative and listen
    • Focus discussion on improving performance, not on discussing dead issues of the past.

Potential Pitfalls When Writing Performance Appraisals

  • Only offering feedback during Performance Appraisals
  • Not dedicating adequate time
  • Not having predetermined, crystal-clear expectations
  • Poor or unclear process

3 Things to Remember About Writing Performance Appraisals

  1. Everybody hates performance appraisals for a reason – they are usually done poorly
  2. Make it future oriented
  3. Offer feedback continually – not just once per year.

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about Writing Performance Appraisals (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

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Performance Appraisals

Join Jed and Bob as they discuss the four key actions, and potential pitfalls of conducting a great Performance Appraisal.

Watch the ‘Performance Appraisals’ Video (16 mins 06 sec):


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Delegate Effectively

Join Jed and Bob as they discuss why, how and what managers should delegate.

Watch the ‘Delegate Effectively’ Video (25 mins 06 sec):


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Delegate Effectively

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Effective Delegation is core managerial skill that almost all managers can improve upon.  Below we talk about:

  • Why Managers Don’t Delegate
  • Why Managers Should Delegate
  • What Managers Should Delegate
  • How to Delegate

Why Managers Don’t Delegate

If Effective Delegation is such a good idea, why do some managers not bother to do it?  There are several impediments to Effective Delegation:

  • Delegating takes some up front work so it seems easier just to do it yourself.
  • Some managers are control freaks.  (What if it doesn’t get done the way I would do it?)
  • Some managers see it as asking for help — which they perceive as weak.
  • Some managers feel badly about passing on their work to others.

Why Managers Should Delegate

Regardless of the reasons why managers don’t delegate, there are several compelling reasons to practice Effective Delegation:

  • It helps develop the skills and abilities of the people you are delegating to.
  • It frees you up to do the work that only you can/should do.
  • It makes the business more capable if they were to lose a manager for any reason.

What Managers Should Delegate

The first step of Effective Delegation is deciding what tasks should be passed off to someone else:

  • Tasks that someone else could do.
    • Who on your team has the knowledge, skills and abilities to do the work?
  • Tasks that would contribute to building your team.
    • Who would benefit from the development opportunity?
  • Tasks that are organizationally appropriate to delegate.
    • Be careful about delegating tasks for which you are ultimately accountable for completing.  This is not about passing the buck
    • If you are unsure, get alignment with your boss.

How to Delegate

Now that you have decided what tasks to delegate and considered to whom to assign them, you must communicate appropriately to those people:

  • Context
    • What the work is that you are delegating
    • Why are you delegating this work
    • How this work is important to the bigger picture
  • Clarify
    • Clarify the desired outcomes and expectations
    • Clarify constraints, boundaries and resources
  • Create
    • Where possible empower the individual to contribute their ideas as to how the work will get done.
    • Create the plan together
  • Commit
    • Get commitment and alignment to specific timelines, due dates, reviews, follow up meetings, measures of success etc.
  • Close
    • Wrap it up and express support and confidence in the individual.

3 Things to Remember About Effective Delegation:

  1. Do it!  Good Managers get work done.  Great Managers get work done through and with others.
  1. Make smart decisions about what to delegate and who to delegate to.
  2. Leverage the Wily Manager Coaching Model (Context, Clarify, Create, Commit, Close) to delegate effectively.

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Delegate – Unless You’d Rather Be a Martyr

Are you a martyr…or are you using delegation to get more work done with less effort?

The ‘Delegate Effectively and Get More Done‘ Video and Cheat Sheet was just added to the website. In it, we lead you through the exact 5-step process you need to follow to delegate effectively.  Get Instant Access Today.

Everyone knows an Office Martyr.

These are the people that absolutely refuse to let go of any of their tasks, thinking that no one can do them as well as they can.  This refusal to delegate makes about as much sense as taking your summer vacation in Damascus.

Yet this kind of self-destructive behavior is actually encouraged.  As a society, we’ve decided that many other behaviors that were acceptable only a few decades ago, are now completely out of the question.  A careful viewing of any episode of Mad Men will confirm how much has changed in a relatively short time.  Gone are the days of getting completely plastered at lunch, and then driving back to the office to finish up your day.  Same goes for smoking, recreational drug use, gambling, gluttony, and virtually all other forms of excessive, self-destructive behavior.

The one glaring exception is workoholism.  How many times have you been bombarded on Monday mornings with tales of alleged heroism about how someone successfully avoided their family all weekend, so they could work right through to finish some insignificant office project?  The same people will drone on about how they get to the office before 7.00am, and work past 6.00pm on a regular basis.

This refusal to delegate is something to be embarrassed about, not something one brags about.  Not many people entertain people at the water cooler boasting about their other vices:

  • “I spent the weekend gambling away my kids’ tuition money!
  • “I ate 12 boxes of Krispy-Kreme’s in one sitting on Saturday.  Then I purged, and did it again.”
  • “I keep a bottle of vodka, along with a toothbrush and mouthwash in my purse for mid-day emergencies.”

All of these sound as ridiculous to me as, “I work 80 hours per week on a regular basis”.  Congratulations – you’re completely dysfunctional, and probably need to see a mental health professional – top speed.

There are only two situations that I could envision someone working an 80-hour week:

  1. The exceptional project, event or occurrence that will quickly pass to return to a more reasonable way of working, or
  2. You are a farmer – in which case you have my gratitude and respect.
If you’re consistently overworked (and you’re not a farmer), then there’s a good chance you should be delegating more of your responsibilities.  
 
In the ‘Delegate Effectively and Get More Done‘ Video and Cheat Sheet, we explain why many managers don’t delegate (and why they should), which tasks are appropriate for delegation, and the exact 5-step process you can follow to delegate effectively.  
 
Become a member and get instant access.  
 
Unless, of course, you don’t want to ruin your reputation as the office martyr.

Managers – The Ultimate Renewable Resource

Many organizations plug a new manager into a vacant position without having done anything to develop the talent required for that job, then insist the manager work 60 to 80 hours a week.  When the manager burns out, they replace him with a younger model, and the cycle is repeated.  Managers – the Ultimate Renewable Resource.

I once worked for such an organization.  We called the head office Jurassic Park because:

  • It was full of dinosaurs, and
  • It seemed like an appropriate location to produce a horror film

In this organization, the only way to advance was to have started when you were sixteen years old, and then work excessive hours your entire working life.

Education was actively discouraged.  If you had any aspirations to better yourself through post-secondary education, you had to keep it a secret or risk being put on ‘student status’ which meant your benefits were curtailed, and you were ineligible for advancement.

This company didn’t infuse their management ranks with talent from the outside, either.  They very much believed that if you did not ‘grow up’ with this company then you didn’t have any experience worth considering.  They didn’t believe their competitors had any talent, nor were skills learned in any other industry worth anything.

It was so inbred, it made the kid on porch playing the banjo in Deliverance look like a Rhodes Scholar.

Interestingly, this company was in a highly competitive industry with a number of new, aggressive entrants to the market.  Yet I was once told the company was doing well because it only lost 5% of market share and 2% of revenue in the previous year.  That’s right – they measured their success by how little their performance sucked.

You can imagine how this all ends.

In such a company, all the highest potential people leave to go where they can advance their skills and their careers.  The few who remain become more overwhelmed than George W. Bush at a Mensa meeting, and sooner or later just give up.

Until now, organizations have been able to get away with treating managers as the Ultimate Renewable Resource.  But demographics are quickly turning the tables.  The Baby Boomer mass workplace exodus has begun, and many companies are shocked to discover that they are having trouble filling those vacant positions, especially management roles.

If you work for a company where the senior leadership looks anything like the characters from Jurassic Park, how can you evolve from the age of dinosaurs?

Smart organizations have realized that they need to proactively develop potential leaders in-house.  When a vacancy arises, they have a pool of qualified talent to choose from, instead of scrambling around trying to find a warm body to fill the position.

The first step is an organizational commitment to ongoing development of leadership skills in employees at all levels.

A Wily Manager Corporate Membership gives you and your co-workers practical, ‘in-the-trenches’ leadership advice that’s actually fun, requires less than 20 minutes a week, and doesn’t take you away from the office.

And best of all, your organization pays.  They’ll be happy to foot the bill when they see how inexpensive it is, how easy it is to get started, and all the ways it will benefit the company.

You can help – put us in touch with the right person at your workplace, and we’ll suggest a Wily Manager Corporate Membership for you and your co-workers.

Succession Plans – An Introduction

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Succession Plans are an effective, but often under utilized tool that leaders can use to better manage their business.  Below we discuss in more detail:

  • Why Bother with Succession Plans
  • Where to Start with Succession Plans
  • The 9 box system of Succession Plans
  • Replacement Planning
  • Development Planning
  • Talent Management

Why Bother with Succession Plans

Many managers would not bother with Succession Plans unless their HR group insists they are done.  Good managers in competitive businesses must take on Succession Plans on their own, even if there is no organizational support.

The success of your business strategy depends on having the right talent in place to execute it.

“If I were to pick one marker above all others to use as a warning sign, it would be a declining proportion of key seats filled with the right people.”

           Jim Collins, How the Mighty Fall (Page 57).

Where to Start with Succession Plans

Any attempt to improve a business or its people is only effective if it is done within the context of better achieving business results.  Start by asking these questions:

  • Will your Succession Plans advance the strategy of the business or your department?
  • Do your Succession Plans enhance the competencies (knowledge, skills and abilities) required to achieve the business strategy?
  • Are your Succession Plans consistent with the values of the organization?

Then look at where you are now

  • What are the key jobs in your organization?
  • What percentage of those jobs are filled with the right people?
  • Do you have the organizational diversity that will drive innovation?
  • How many people in those key jobs are nearing retirement eligibility?
  • How many would you characterize as a turnover risk?

The 9-Box System of Succession Plans

Succession Plans - Talent Review

Replacement Planning

Succession Plans - Replacement Planning

Development Planning

Many organizations have significant training and development activity.  Far fewer do so in a systematic way that will advance the goals of the organization.  All training and development that does not change specific, targeted behaviors is a waste of time and money.

Targeted Development asks fundamental questions:

  • What are the future requirements of the organization?
  • What are an individual’s strengths and developmental opportunities?
  • What are the current business needs?

Talent Management

Succession Plans - Talent Management

Three Things to Remember About Succession Plans

  1. All Succession Plans must be future focused.
  2. Succession Plans must be action oriented.
  3. Succession Plans are more than simply Replacement Planning.

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about Succession Plans (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

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Strategy for an Inexperienced Workforce

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There is a looming experience gap in your workforce, presenting a significant risk to many businesses.  Here are some specific strategies managers should implement to anticipate and overcome this problem.

The Demographic Reality

  • Most of the population is older than 50 and younger than 30 due to the baby boom
  • Organizations fired most of their middle managers in the ‘90s when they restructured/reorganized
  • As more experienced employees retire, you’re going to have trouble replacing them
  • Immigration only partially addresses the problem
  • Your 20-somethings used to have 15 years to develop their skills, whereas now they might have only 5 years

The bottom line: You need to “skill up” people faster (both accelerated leadership development and technical development).

What To Do?

We need to lead our businesses differently to account for this looming experience gap.  This problem may or may not be addressed by HR in your organization, so you need to go ahead with or without their support.

1. Build a Talent Projection

  • You need to know your situation.  What is the scope of your problem?  What is the gap in your skilled talent?
  • How many people do you lose per year due to normal attrition?
  • How many people will you lose to retirement in the next 5 years?
  • What people demands will the growth of the business place on your talent?

2. Become a Capability Building Machine

  • You need to figure out how to capture the knowledge of retiring employees, and transition it to younger employees.
  • Training is one method, but should not be the only method (and many organizations default to training).
  • Other more effective methods include mentoring, job shadowing, stretch assignments, and coaching.

3. Insist Leaders Be Coaches

  • If you have an inexperienced workforce, or are anticipating one, your leaders must be coaches.  They must be inspired to bring out the excellence in others.
  • The number one priority of leaders in such situations must be to build skills (both leadership and technical) in the organization.
  • You need to hire, promote, reward, and reinforce for the development of people.

3 Things to Remember About Anticipating and Dealing With an Inexperienced Workforce:

  1. This is NOT an HR problem.  This is a management problem, and a significant risk to many businesses.
  2. Don’t let leaders off the hook because they are technically excellent.  They need to make others excellent.
  3. Think beyond training.

Watch the ‘3-Minute Crash Course’ about dealing with an inexperienced workforce (CLICK THE ARROW TO START THE VIDEO):

Looking for the Full-Length Podcast/Video? …

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Why Socrates Drank the Hemlock

About 2500 years ago, Socrates lamented the work ethic of the younger generation.  Apparently, on the way to his day-job as a stand-up philosopher, he’d stop at the Athens Starbucks and wait in line far too long, while the kid working the La Marzucco machine (who looks like he fell down the stairs with a tackle-box given the number of piercings and jewelry he’s wearing) would casually froth one latte at time.  No wonder he drank the hemlock – he was thirsty.

Fast forward in time a couple of millennia, and not much has changed.  Anyone over 40 has at least a mild annoyance with those under 30 and how they work.  The problem is, the bulk of the population is hurling towards retirement faster than Lindsay Lohan is to rehab, and there aren’t many people in their 30s and 40s to replace them.  This means the 20-somethings will be taking over the world in short order – probably well before they are equipped to do so.

Unless organizations get their heads around this, and act soon, our whole society will be immersed in the whims and fancies of people who think popcorn was actually meant to be cooked in a microwave.  Here’s what you can expect:

  • Recognition certificates for anyone who shows up on time for work five consecutive times.
  • Job title inflation – the barista I mentioned above will hence be called the Vice-President of Local Product Production and Distribution.
  • Not wanting to work on sunny days will be classified as a disability.
  • If you ask someone for the 2nd time to get something done, you will be subject to a harassment suit.

Of course, I might be the wrong guy to comment on this – I spent my whole first day at my first real job walking around with my fly open.

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