Managing Performance Requires a Variety of Approaches That Are Integrated to Help You Deliver the Results You Want.

Do you find that you have lofty goals and expectations for your teams but are not totally satisfied with your bottom-line results? Maybe you’re not happy with the progress along the key milestones? It’s time to consider the different types of performance management systems you can use throughout the year to improve company, team, and individual results.

We define performance management not as just part of the traditional HR understanding, but broaden our perspective to mean any system and processes to manage the company, team, and individual performance to meet goals and expectations.

This all starts with the company’s long-term strategic goals. Running the strategic goals through strategy to execution processes like Strategic Goal Deployment™ will help you to define short-term goals for the year, prioritize initiatives, and then assign ownership for different metrics, their monthly targets, and the action steps that will hit expected results each month.

There are also behaviors you want from your team. When your company’s core values are clearly defined then you can go through the process to develop leadership norms and the behaviors that support your desired culture.

With your company performance goals and behaviors clear, it’s time to consider the systems and processes to manage performance of your team. These fall into long-term and short-term systems.

Long-Term Performance Management

Long-term systems are on a monthly or longer rhythm. These include the annual strategic goal deployment exercise I mentioned above, and the associated monthly progress reviews.

There are also the monthly are quarterly performance meetings to review financial and operational results versus your budgets and plans. Special initiatives that have clear charters with goals and deliverables will also fit here as you review progress monthly or quarterly.

For managing individual performance, the traditional annual performance appraisal process fits within long-term performance management. Of course, you could have a formal process for discussing individual performance more frequently than the annual exercise, and we love it when managers take the personal initiative to schedule a quarterly 1-on-1 meeting with each of their employees.

Short-Term Performance Management

Short-term systems are those you follow frequently, such as daily or weekly, to check that day-to-day activity is delivering the results you want by following the right behaviors. Daily systems include the hourly tracking of process output as target versus actual boards or the daily leadership processes, such as Gemba Walks and visual board reviews. People who have read and follow the process within my international bestselling book “Act Now! A Daily Action Log For Achieving Your Goals In 90 Days” are using a system to maximize personal performance.

Weekly project updates are another type of short-term system. A manager might request individuals who own specific projects, or team leaders who have resources helping them achieve goals, to share progress in 1-on-1 meetings. Or, the manager might have a larger review meeting with multiple project leaders together at the same time. Kaizen events create a great opportunity to monitor the kaizen team’s progress, with end of day leader meetings and the team presentation at the end of the week.

Evaluate Your Systems

Take a look at the full array of systems you use to manage performance in your company, both long-term and short-term. Are they ensuring that you are making progress toward your goals at the pace you desire?

If you’re not happy with your results then consider modifications to align with the basics I’ve shared above, you might find that you only have an annual performance appraisal process without the other team or individual reviews throughout the year. Or, maybe you have monthly and quarterly reviews but nothing at the daily and weekly frequencies. Perhaps you have all your focus as bottom-line financial or operational results, but ignore the behaviors component of managing performance.

All these types are important to work together in an integrated way to get you to your goals the fastest while developing a high performance team along the way. As you can see, there are multiple systems to have in place to manage the performance of your company, your teams, and your individuals.