Developing a sustainable competitive advantage is vital in todays business environment. While that may seem an insurmountable challenge, there are a few things you can do to make the road a little less bumpy.
Implement a Planning Framework
If doing one thing can influence your competitive advantage more than anything else, planning is it. Through a carefully developed and implemented planning framework, organisations can device ways to meet their goals.
The framework needs to provide a method to develop plans at each organisational level, and to integrate those plans together. What many people don’t understand is that planning needs to be a two way process. For example, an operational plan for a front-line work team derives many of its goals and objectives from superior level plans. What is equally important and often overlooked is that the front-line work team should also drive those same superior level plans. Front-line work teams often have insights into the way technology, industry and processes are heading, positively impacting departmental and organisational plans.
Merely having plans doesn’t suffice. Organisations need to ensure that they operate to the plan. There is no reason to have a plan if you are not going to follow it.
Measure Performance Against the Plan
Once your plans are in place, one of the most beneficial ways to ensure you’re working to the plan is measuring individual performance against it. Far too many organisations attempt to measure individual performance against corporate goals. It really doesn’t work, particularly for support roles that do not directly work towards higher level goals.
Instead, ensuring that plans exist for every work unit allows you to develop an understanding of what work is performed, and how it contributes to higher level goals. Each individual can be measured against performance indicators taken directly from their work unit’s operational plan. It really is that simple.
Reward Talent Based on Performance
If you have gone through the effort of building a performance management system that is linked to your planning framework, why not go the extra way of structuring your reward strategy around it?
Think about it, you know which employees are meeting their individual goals. You know which units and departments are reaching their group goals. With that knowledge there are a myriad of ways to structure rewards. You can place an amount of individual pay “at-risk”, so that employees must perform to obtain it. I’d prefer a “bonus” type scenario, essentially the same, but feels like extra reward, rather than something the employee was already entitled to on some level.