Performing Arts

Have you ever tried to launch a performance improvement plan, but didn’t have enough support from executive management?  Chances are the initiative lacked focus, direction, and ultimately was unsuccessful.  This is due to the fact executive management plays the biggest role in keeping leaders within the organization focused on what’s important…and that’s improving performance, growing productivity, and sustaining growth.  Truth is, all executives want these things, but usually performance improvement is lost amongst the myriad of organizational objectives.  This is why it is important for performance management teams to discover efficient methods for keeping organizational performance on the forefront.  This post focuses on tactics for getting support from senior executives and keeping leaders focused on organizational performance management.

Keeping senior management and executives focused on performance management can prove to be really challenging, specifically with their busy schedules.  This can be accomplished by keeping the topic of performance management in front of executives, keeping them involved with the initiative and informing them of performance management successes.

Maintain the Subject of Performance Management In Front of Executives

This may seem basic, but if executives are not continually reminded of the value that your performance management initiative will bring to the organization, performance management will get lost amongst all the challenges and obstacles that are put in front of them.  Bear in mind, these are the individuals who have the authority and influence to get issues carried out.  You are competing with the other essential initiatives that are taking location within your organization.

Keep Executives Involved With the Performance Initiative

Once the leaders inside the organization are focused on performance management, you have to maintain them involved with the initiative.  This is carried out by getting them to clearly state what their objectives are and what specifically they are trying to accomplish.  This is particularly essential in organizations where executive management changes or where there are modifications in the organizational structure.  Do not assume that you know what senior management objectives are.  Often times, when there is new management and modifications inside the organizational structure, there are also modifications in what is perceived as most important.  Bear in mind, each and every executive would like to leave a legacy.  Uncover out what that is and identify how you can measure their successes.

Maintain Executives Informed of the Performance Improvements and Successes

Senior management and executives enjoy to hear about productive performance results, for these results are direct reflections of their impact to the organization.  Locate a way to quantify their efforts and they will be on board for other suggestions you bring in front of them.  Do this by highlighting successes in executive management initiatives, techniques and other influences.  By the way, executives are not the only ones who benefit from positive performance details.  When employees are made conscious of their impact on the successes of the organization, they turn out to be much more open to the notion of performance managers coming in and offering input as to how they can perform greater.  Hopefully, they are rewarded for their contributions and strong performance.  But it all starts from the top.  If executive management is not on board in the very first place, neither will the employees who execute their strategy.

Now that we’ve discussed the importance of acquiring executives focused on a performance management initiative, let’s discuss four strategies for successfully maintaining this focus.

Setup Meetings With Executive Managers

This appears like such an obvious step, but you’d be amazed at how several organizations have performance management programs that do not get the exposure and support it requirements from senior management.  With the busy schedule of executives, it is simple to get put on the backburner.  This is where you have to be persistent.  You’ve already shown them the value of performance management and how it can support their objectives.  Now you just want to maintain focus.  Setup weekly or monthly meetings with executives.  By acquiring on their schedule with typical meetings you’ll keep performance fresh on their minds.

Deliver Presentations to Executives That Highlight Your Organization’s Greatest Performance Challenges

This is where you sell executives on the value of the performance initiative.  Develop effective presentations that not only illustrate how nicely the organization is performing, but also illustrate what the specific obstacles that confront the organization.  Keep in mind, anybody can gather performance information.  Your responsibility as a performance manager is to present the information in a way that clarifies what the challenges are and how to overcome those challenges.  Gathering the information is a science, but displaying that information so that executives can far better understand what makes the organization go and what’s holding the organization back is an art.

Communicate Which Divisions / Service Areas Are Not Aligned to Executive Goals and Objectives

Performance alignment is the single, most crucial aspect to successfully executing a performance strategy.   Unless performance is in alignment to organizational objectives and objectives, the organization will be limited in executing the overall strategy.  Executives know this very nicely, which is 1 reason the Balanced Scorecard has amassed so significantly popularity and grow to be a common word in the organization world.  If you can communicate to executive management how nicely the organization is or is not aligned to the organizational objectives and objectives, you will absolutely get their attention and their time.  But be careful as to how to display this information.  As I have written in other articles, how you present performance information, particularly poor performance, plays a main role in gaining employee acceptance.  While executive management wants to know about these shortcomings, it is only fair and great practice to make positive that the groups that you are reporting on have been involved in the procedure and have access to your findings.  Bear in mind, performance management is only productive if everybody is on board.  It is our job as performance managers to balance the negative perceptions, and often egos that come with the performance initiative.

Deliver Supplemental Training and or Workshops on Certain Topics

Although executive management makes the key decisions, it is the employees that drive performance.  Therefore , it is critical that they understand, at a minimum, the basics of performance management, such as understanding organizational objectives, baselining performance, setting goals, and applying performance measures.  The biggest errors many performance management teams make is that they carry the performance challenges on their shoulders, typically defining all of the metrics, and creating the performance plans, which minimizes employee and management input.  They understand what drives the company.  Improve employee input and feedback by facilitating informational performance management workshops.  Teach them about key performance indicators and how to develop winning performance metrics, how they will benefit, and how their contribution impacts the organization.  Explain the objectives of executive management.  Reassure employees that this is not an physical exercise to judge their performance and tell them how to do their job.  The focus ought to be on improving performance and empowering everybody to grow.  Have issue-solving sessions that address the challenges, bottlenecks and obstacles that limit performance.  Bear in mind, a high performing organization is a collective state of mind a culture.

We’ve discussed what you , as a manager, need to do to maintain executive management and organizational leaders focused on performance management.  We’ve discussed how you can get employees on board and in a high performance mindset.  Now, let’s take a look at 3 things that executives can do to support your initiative and make sure organizational performance success.

Have Executives Reiterate Their Support of the Performance Initiative to the Organization

As mentioned earlier, this is the key to obtaining employees on board for the performance initiative.  When executives make performance a priority, employees follow.  Have executives send emails, hold town hall meetings, distribute flyers and anything else that sends the message that performance will be on their radar.

Have Leaders Present Feedback on What Performance Areas They Feel Are Most Critical

We ought to always be measuring how well the organization is reaching organizational objectives.  This will usually be useful to executive management.  But, just as the organization is continuously changing, so is what’s crucial to executives on any given day.  For example, if your organization is implementing an enterprise-wide application or other initiative, the success of that migration will be very critical to senior and executive management.   In the course of that time, they will want to know how nicely the migration is going and how clients (employees in this case) perceive it.

Have Executives Re-evaluate Organizational Objectives Frequently

Have you ever implemented a performance technique, and got fantastic initial outcomes, only to hit a wall and see performance gains come to a halt?  This frequently happens when we measure the exact same issues for an extended period of time, due to the fact what we‘re measuring may well no longer support the direction the organization is attempting to go.  It’s essential that executive management regularly (at least as soon as a year) readdresses organizational objectives and objectives.  Keep in mind, your objective as a performance manager is to make sure that your organization reaches its organizational goals.  By continuously measuring what’s critical to executives, you will no doubt grow to be a key asset for executives.