If You Want Performance – Do These Five Things

I’m going to fill you in on something many leaders don’t get: You must fulfill five very basic requirements if you expect people to perform.

• You MUST give your people an explicit sense of the overall organization’s mission and values, and why they should care about them.
• You MUST develop specific, precise, granular and measurable performance expectations with each of your people.
• You MUST review people’s performance against those expectations on a systematic, regularly scheduled basis with them. Together, you must identify variances from expectations and develop plans to get back on track in real time.
• You MUST give your people a sense of how their contribution fits into the whole.
• You MUST give honest feedback to people on their prospects for long-term success along dimensions that are important to them. Concurrently, you MUST help people develop reasonable, achievable aspirations.

One of my clients, the CEO of a Fortune 100, spends an average of 600 hours per year reviewing the performance and prospects of his company’s top 150 (or so) leaders. He believes in focusing and leveraging his time. His company consistently achieves shareholder, customer and employee expectations. It consistently appears on “best-managed” and “best places to work” lists. He gets it; how about you? Copyright 2012 Rand Golletz. All rights reserved.