Rethink your Performance Management System

Your performance management system isn’t working.

As organizations reimagine what the future looks like post-pandemic, they must also reimagine workforce planning, people, culture and performance. As InspireCorps looks ahead, we see a global transformation that is reshaping business in significant ways. We have to reshape how we develop and grow people in order to keep pace. 

Companies will need to create new inspired brand and customer experiences starting from within – their own employee experience. In the words of Stan Slap, renowned thought leader in how to achieve maximum commitment from manager, employee and customer cultures, “you can’t sell it outside if you can’t sell it inside.”

Today’s workforce is suffering like never before.

Everyday headlines tell the story:

• Many people are burnt out.
• People’s life experience is more important than just their work experience.
• Employees are suffering from surge and change fatigue.
• Half of US workers are suffering from mental illness.
• Command and control leadership is no longer working.

The list goes on and on, as organizations realize that balancing the wellbeing and performance of their people, and inspiring their leadership, is now an even more crucial need for business success.

In order to transform and meet these changing needs, organizations must revamp traditional systems and processes for performance management that no longer meet the mark. Fast Company contributor Lars Schmidt offers that Legacy HR was built on the premise of command and control.

“The reality with this over-engineering process approach is that we shot ourselves in the foot. HR can’t control every facet of every aspect of the employee experience—nor should they. It’s not about authority through ownership, it’s about engagement through empowerment”.

The truth is that traditional systems weren’t working before Covid; the turbulence from the pandemic has merely highlighted and accelerated their ineffectiveness.  And still, an incredible number of organizations continue to implement systems that rely on annual review and performance management processes that ignore high value learning and development, instead driven by the allocation of bonus and other merit increases.  

These organizations spend extraordinary amounts of time and resources on processes that: 

• exhaust managers (and employees)
• result in poorly executed feedback (that often causes more harm than good)
• lack the acknowledgement and recognition that truly build trust and connection
• Ignore (almost always) the kind of leadership and career development and planning that employees consistently seek. 
• Create fear and uncertainty, anchoring in “winners and losers”.

Ultimately, they miss what they are actually designed to achieve: the deliberate development of people to drive performance excellence while at the same time build a culture of wellbeing and inspiration. 

PULSE: The Solution

We know a better way.

We see a complete reimagining of people strategy that focuses on the deliberate development of people, as an opportunity to grow leaders by simultaneously focusing on their inspiration, wellbeing and performance excellence. 

As an alternative to traditional and ineffective processes, we have designed a proprietary PULSE system as a new performance management approach to increase engagement, strengthen communication and build trust around goal setting and performance success. It’s a fully integrated process fueled by inspiration and aligned to organizational priorities and values as a driver of performance excellence. 

The PULSE program is not only a complete performance management system, but a powerful and comprehensive framework with agendas and tools for more frequent meaningful and motivating feedback rich conversations between employees and managers designed to do the following:

• Create an inspired leader development action plan – research shows that what employees want more than anything else is to grow and learn. The PULSE system includes an annual inspirational and aspirational exercise that guides employees at every level to create a powerful leader impact statement that is supported by key development priorities and an action plan for growth. The goal of the plan is not just to achieve and exceed their performance metrics and KPI’s, but to grow stronger as leaders and contributors in the process.
• Increase clarity + accountability around roles and responsibilities – one of the things we hear most from leaders when they are asked what gets in the way of performance excellence is what turns out to be too much micromanagement and their  desire to delegate more effectively. The 1:1 conversations built into the PULSE system are uniquely designed to produce clarity and accountability, amplifying connection and collaboration so that employees feel efficacy, autonomy and empowered. 
• Strengthen communication + build trust – especially today, in our new distributed and virtual environment, building trust and connection is not only harder, but more important than it has ever been. The entire PULSE system is built on a foundation of positive psychology and designed to support managers through a coach approach to all performance related and 1:1 development conversations. Tools, resources and conversation agendas are included throughout the entire process to help leaders of people strengthen their communication, feedback/feedforward and coaching competencies as they grow into deliberately developmental leaders. Through these carefully constructed conversations, feedback is always provided with feedforward (providing a future oriented vision and solution), with the intention of supporting people to build capability and grow stronger. 
• Support personal + professional growth, learning, and success – looking to 2021 and beyond, what has become clear is that successful leaders must balance the wellbeing of their people with the drive for performance excellence. To do this they must connect with the unique personal experiences of each employee and at the same time, invite them to take a significant role in shaping the ways that they want to grow and evolve. What employees want most is the opportunity to think aspirationally about who they are becoming as a leader, the contribution and impact they can make through their role, and the ways they can accelerate their career path. The PULSE system has inspiration and aspiration built into its foundation, knowing that this is what is ultimately at the core of motivation, engagement and fulfillment.

If your performance management process is one that has a beginning and end, if it sits on the calendar as mere 1:1 meetings with each employee and an annual review document that is completed once each year, and if it doesn’t include powerful, aspirational conversations about how each employee see themselves growing, it is not producing what you need it to. 

Performance management for success into the future is an agile, living and breathing process. It is a commitment to deliberately developing people for performance excellence and to building an organizational system that allows and supports them to have their best days more often. 

We would love to join you for an exploration of what’s possible in your organization and on your team to ignite people and performance, and how you can begin to take small steps to reimagine the future.