Performance Management – A perspective

My friend sent me a story which is pretty popular. It can be found easily in circulation on internet.

I am sure most would have a kind of agreement with this story. Many may even find themselves in the story. I would like to see this story from a different perspective.

From Dogs’ View

Dog’s failure to performed the defined task was compounded with

1. His inability to learn from experience

2. He took his status as DOG – A perceived animal for safety

It is not difficult to find such workforce. General characteristic of such people would be

1. There isn’t much to be done now.

2. If someone can do my job let him do it, I can take rest.

3. “Retiring” from job even before they have got retired.

Such people in system has problem in growing and they become someone who exist but not so important.

From Donkeys’ View

Donkey actually did a great start of attempting to do what other are expected to perform. Donkey was promptly rewarded as well. There few important challenges that existed.

1. Donkey did not develop the overall competency of the Dog

2. It only copied the dog behavior

3. The task based performance would always increase the work load on those who perform the task better. The only people can overcome this is by investing their time and resource to build their competency for tomorrow.

Such frustrations are common among hardworking employees.

From the Farmer’s View

Farmer typically represents the Managers and leaders of the organization. They are very happy with the results that are transaction driven. The performance review process do not consider competency factor beyond identifying a standardize list of training that would be required by the employee.

What should we do then?

In today’s business environment, it is necessary that we build our competencies that would enable us to manage varied aspects of business. Hence the old moral of “keeping yourself to your job” is not relevant in most circumstance. This would possibly be relevant to only job roles where experts are required. The challenge is that we are not willing to expect that we are not expert. We somehow believe that if I am successful I have to be an expert. The reality is contrary to this. While we would need to experiment and do different tasks, it is important that we build ourselves to be proficient in different field. The business organizations require more people who are 

proficient

 rather than 

experts

.

1. We need start looking at Performance Review beyond Appraisal for compensation change decision.

2. The review of the performance must include Learning aspects of the job and outcome.

3. Competency Development should be the focus of the Performance Management.

4. Rewards must consider the competence building factors.