At a recent meeting I heard the business owner mention to his Senior Leadership Team that he was looking for “best practice” in the way he was going to conduct an upcoming performance review process.
The business owner was a switched-on modern leader of a successful manufacturing company. Knowing his business, I knew where he was coming from with his comment about “best practice”. He sought processes that would deliver the best outcomes. Working with him and the Senior Leadership Team I now feel that we have his best business interest at heart and have developed a useful, pragmatic approach based on their strategy.
However, this did make me reflect about another similar sized organization that I had partnered with in the past. For that company we initially enhanced the performance management process to achieve greater transparency, create honest conversations, and gain greater focus on achieving objectives. This was achieved through determining the best approach for the team based on factors that were derived from their mission, vision, and strategy. It was hard work to go from point A to point B, but in the end, it proved to be a highly fruitful exercise, particularly for the owner.
I was glad to continue to partner with the company under new ownership. We were making in-roads with difficult HR challenges and creating a more refined structure befitting of the new ownership. Staff were hired. Non-performance was addressed and managed. Some staff were professionally managed out.
When it came time for the annual performance reviews, I was happy the new owner felt it would be beneficial to have them done again. Until……
…on a Monday morning the owner said she googled “Best Practice Performance Review” over the weekend.
Much to my dismay she found some sort of template to use that was so disconnected from who they were and what they wanted to achieve that I was speechless.
She said, “This is Best Practice, that’s what the internet said!”
Need I say more.