Some of you missed yesterday’s busted link to Michelle Malay Carter’s post on Who is Accountable? Should work this time.
So, who is accountable? Managers have been taught to play all kinds of games with this. My favorite is Results Based Performance. When I ask a group how many subscribe to that philosophy, the hands shoot up with enthusiasm.
But Results Based Performance isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In most cases, it is a manager abdicating their managerial responsibilities. If a team member was a goose and the intended result was a golden egg, it’s as if the manager said, “I don’t know how to manage, I don’t how to encourage, support, train, or any of those other managerial things, so I will only count your golden eggs. And that is how I will judge how you are doing.”
The number of golden eggs seldom tells the story about performance. The number of golden eggs says more about the managerial system than it does the goose.
Outstanding blog! I have been associated with Results Based Performance and was not at all impressed. How would one know their true capacity? Additionally, how would you evaluate a manager’s effectiveness or performance?
I am actually a firm believer in results based performance. It doesn’t make sense for every position, but I believe it’s beneficial for knowledge workers.
One of the biggest problems I see is the lack of clearly defined objectives. What is the ultimate goal of the position? Implementing an efficient process? Managing the Accounts Payable group to clear outstanding invoices? Managing a project? The result is what matters.
It doesn’t (shouldn’t) eliminate managers responsibilities, it should actually make it more difficult. The manager must understand the current status of the objective, and needs to do a better job clearing obstacles and addressing risk.
Everything but the result is not ignored, but thought of us contributing (or not) to the result. When coupled with a strong team environments, results based performance allows for autonomy, a sense of ownership, and more motivation.
The problems are not the results based approach, but weak management.
Tom is brilliant, but I think he was a bit careless in discounting the results-based performance model itself. It’s like discounting lawnmowers because the 12-year-old neighbor kid I hired did a poor job on my lawn. He just didn’t know how to use it properly.
If we are not oriented toward results and do not measure the effectiveness of our efforts by their results, what do we have left? Measuring effort and good intentions?
[On a side note, sometimes effort and good intentions ARE enough, and this is directly correlated to the predictability of the outcome . Creative and innovative pursuits are like that. Even in those cases, results should be measured and assessed for the purpose of learning].
Granted, many managers and leaders do not truly understand results-orientation. They hold people accountable for results they have little or no control or authority over, and they often do this to shirk personal accountability. But results can be tied to individual performance, and authority and control can be given to each employee for the results they are expected to achieve.
jb
Yeah same here, I am into “Results Based Performance”. I also believe that a good management can also motivate it’s employees so some part would also depends on how the manager manages his/her team.
By the way, great comparison and excellent post!