What's the Focus?

I find it interesting that most articles or books on the topic of communication, management or leadership are very theoretical. Some are very well written and interesting but most do not provide practical, sustainable tools that the average manager can implement quickly and easily. It seams to me that the more we know about the subject of performance management the less productive a tool it becomes.

For example, when I Google “performance management” all kinds of software tools pop up. What are we managing – software or people? Don’t get me wrong – theory is important – but only to the human resources professional. The person who has recently been promoted to a managerial position needs tools not theory. Most people rise to a managerial position because they have exhibited great technical skills. Up until that moment they have managed data, projects, time and that is what they continue to manage. No one tells them, “forget all that, your managing people now.” Furthermore they did not go to school for this. In fact, they hate the thought of having to deal with people.

I once had a manager of the R&D department that loved to hire “great” chemists. These people just loved the lab bench. This manager hired a young chemist who was a wizard at chemistry. The problem was that her job was to provide the customer with samples of potential product. This did not have to be the perfect product or a scalable process. The customer needed something to test – quickly. The Company goal was to make money by providing it’s customers with samples, on time and in budget. The young chemists’ goal was to be a “great” chemist. The manager assumed that if you were a “great” chemist the rest would just happen.

Needles to say, the projects assigned to the young chemist were always late and over budget. The manager could not understand why the young chemist was failing and was not able to properly coach this promising young talent. In fact, the focus of the whole R&D department began to change. Over time chemistry became more important than the customer and the manager had to be let go.

There is only one thing that performance management should assess and that is commitment to the organization. Keep it simple. Stop managing the software. Start managing the people.