Everybody knows that performance management is important. What many people do not understand is that performance management absolutely must be based on fair, measurable and purposeful objectives. Without that, you can’t really expect any kind of performance. Even if you could, how would you know?
For whatever reason, many organisations pay lip service to performance management. Managers and staff don’t collaborate to develop clear objectives, and consequently performance is not really managed at all. The “annual review” process is treated with disdain, and the process repeats year after year.
What if it worked differently? What if performance management wasn’t a painful waste of time without any real results? Performance management can be different, and it should never be a waste of time – if it is, why bother? So, without any further adieu, here are my three top tips for effective objectives for individuals.
1. Start at the Beginning
Begin planning for your objectives by reviewing and understanding your work groups operational plan. By that I don’t mean a high level organisation-wide operational plan. I mean the operational plan for your team. If you don’t have one, you need one.
Your operational plan drives your work groups tasks and projects, and should indicate how these will be measured. It probably even contains contain group wide objectives. From this plan you can begin to form individual objectives.
2. Break Down Group Objectives
Armed with an understanding of your plan, you can begin to break down each group objective into smaller parts, each part becoming an individual objective. In some cases, an entire group objective may become an individual objective.
The important thing here is that individual objectives combine to constitute group objectives. In this way, each individual contributes to the groups more general goals. There should never be an individual goal that does not correspond to a group level goal.
3. Link Metrics at Each Level
The final tip for effective individual objectives is to ensure that metrics for performance are consistent at each level. It is important that performance of the operational plan be acheived by performance of individual plans. Failure to do so risks the motivation of staff and, in some ways, culture of the organisation.
For example, if a team of staff work towards and acheive their groups operational objectives, but fail to meet individual performance objectives, there is likely to be discontent. Therefore, it is extremely important to ensure that metrics are developed that echo the group plan.
While these tips are useful, they aren’t all there is. Setting objectives also requires reference to, and acknowledgement of, the individual. There needs to be an open and frank discussion with employees about how they can best meet operational plans, and what they need to do so. Happy planning.
This is really cool daniel! Thanks for updating!
You need to have an effective performance management system in place to really make it successful.
This is good way to plan individual and team objective and measure it.
A key part of objective setting is to ensure that people have the right skills to be able to achieve their objectives — 360 Degree Feedback is a great way to do this.