Author Archives: Tom Foster

About Tom Foster

Tom Foster spends most of his time talking with managers and business owners. The conversations are about business lives and personal lives, goals, objectives and measuring performance. In short, transforming groups of people into teams working together. Sometimes we make great strides understanding this management stuff, other times it’s measured in very short inches. But in all of this conversation, there are things that we learn. This blog is that part of the conversation I can share. Often, the names are changed to protect the guilty, but this is real life inside of real companies.

Losing Our Bonus

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I was meeting with the production team, and they were a bit disgruntled. Actually, they were pissed.

“We had this big meeting last month. The theme was WHATEVER IT TAKES,” Barbara explained. “And they offered a bonus if we met our goals every day this month.”

I nodded, listening. All the faces were quiet, stone quiet, intense.

“We were up to the last day,” she continued. “As we were counting the last batch, on the last day, we discovered a defect, not just one, the whole batch was bad. We had to scrap everything. We pulled the morning’s production run. Same thing. A whole day’s work had to be re-done, and if we were going to get our bonus, we were going to have to stay on past our shift.”

“Did you tell your supervisor?” I asked.

“No, way. He doesn’t have a bonus on the line, we do. So we pulled another batch of material off the shelf. We had to use every last piece. And the team agreed we would stay over until we finished. You see, they won’t pay the bonus if we have to go into overtime, so everybody punched out while we worked.”

“And?”

“And we got it done. Made the quota. Quality passed. High fives all around. At least that’s what we thought. Next morning, though, you would have thought we had set fire to the place. We all got yelled at, and now we hear they are re-thinking our bonus.”

Ten Scholarships

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Monday, we kick off our next series in Working Leadership Online, Time Span and Effectiveness. This subject area looks at the roles we create for our team members and how we go about making managerial judgments on effectiveness. If you are new to the concepts of Time Span, you will never see your team the same way again. It will help you make your decisions about who will play what role by asking three critical questions.

We are offering ten scholarships to this program. If you are interested, please respond to Ask Tom.

A Matter of Decision

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Thanks to Gil Herman for inviting me to spend the day with his Vistage KEY group in Chicago sharing the research of Elliott Jaques. Here is a question from yesterday’s session.

Question:
How do you implement the concepts of Time Span, and the corresponding layers, in an organization where there is very little structure and very few managers. Everyone seems to be doing everything.

Response:
This is a dilemma for most Stratum I and Stratum II organizations. How do you begin to create structure where there is no structure?

This is not a question of implementation. This is a dilemma because it is a decision. Before you can implement, you have to decide, and the decision has to stick, that means commitment.

It’s like being in love. When you are young, you think being in love is a feeling. Later in life, you understand that being in love is a decision. Implementing the principles of Time Span is a decision.

And here are the details of that decision. The choice is to continue to live with the chaos that comes from everyone doing everything. And the reward for free-wheeling chaos is more chaos. The organization will remain, stuck, in its own muck.

The other side of the decision is to change. Stop the chaos, organize roles, define methods, create systems. Easy to say, hard to do. But it all starts with a decision.

Managing Effectiveness

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“Why now?” I asked. “Why this sudden interest in Performance Management?”

Patricia had pulled a file with the job descriptions for her team. But my question stopped her. “I just feel like things are coming back. I look at 2010 and see some upside coming our way. I can’t go back to the way things were before,” she stated flatly. “Some things have to change around here.”

“What changes do you have to make? What do you have to do?” I asked.

“Some real work,” she replied. “I have to sit down and really think about what I want my team to accomplish. These job descriptions describe, but they don’t talk about goals. I feel like I need to start over, from scratch.”

“Starting over, really looking at the productivity you need from each role in the company is a big job. Are you sure you are up for that.”

Patricia nodded slowly. “It’s a matter of necessity.”

Next Monday, we kick off our next series in Working Leadership Online, Time Span and Effectiveness. This subject area looks at the roles we create for our team members and how we go about making managerial judgments on effectiveness. If you are new to the concepts of Time Span, you will never see your team the same way again. It will help you make your decisions about who will play what role by asking three critical questions.

We are offering ten scholarships to this program. For those who are interested, please respond to Ask Tom.

Did I Just Say That?

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Patricia settled in to work on the first dilemma of her Performance Management system, Where to Start.

“Your first gripe about that HR website system was that it wasn’t relevant to the roles of your team. How are you going to change that? Not to make it more relevant, but absolutely relevant? What are you going to hang your hat on?” I asked.

“Instead of a generic form from the website, I was thinking about basing the system on our job descriptions.” As the words came out of her mouth, she scrunched her nose. “Did I just say that?” she realized.

“Yes, what’s wrong with using your job descriptions as a cornerstone to your Performance Management system?”

“I am not sure our job descriptions are much better than the stuff we got off the website. We haven’t updated them in a couple of years and no one really looks at them.”

Nothing Really Changes

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Patricia wasn’t happy with her company’s Performance Appraisal system. She was clear about the reasons why.

  • One size appraisal forms don’t fit. They are often irrelevant for the role under review.
  • The suggested rating criteria are general, vague and can be interpreted in different ways. The discussion is centered around what the rating criteria means or doesn’t mean, instead of what happened.
  • The Performance Appraisal system is centered around an annual discussion, designed to cover events ranging across an entire year, without any supporting documentation other than a person’s memory.
  • The Performance Appraisal is a backward looking process.
  • Most actions that come from the Performance Appraisal discussion are corrective in nature. Fixing weaknesses instead of building on strengths.
  • After the Performance Appraisal discussion, nothing really changes. Any impact, good or bad, usually fades within a few days. Maybe after a few minutes.

I congratulated her analysis. “Job well done. Most people won’t sit and write these things down. With this analysis, we can make some headway.”

Patricia smiled. “Thank you.”

I smiled. “So, now the work begins. Your challenge will be to take each of these reasons and create something new. Your new Performance Management system has to address each of these issues, especially the last one. I want to see something that truly creates meaningful change.”

Patricia had some work ahead of her.

Bored With This One

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“I talked with some of the other managers,” Patricia explained. “No one likes our Performance Appraisal system.”

I nodded. “Tell me more.”

“Here’s the thing. Sure, we get together informally on a daily basis and talk about what is going on. But to sit down formally once a year to evaluate someone isn’t very productive. Even if I could remember something that happened earlier in the year, what’s the point. It’s water under the bridge. And most of the scoring questions are about things that I don’t think are relevant for most of our positions.”

“Then, why did your company select the format from this website?” I asked.

Patricia smiled. “Because no one wanted to take the time to really think this thing through. No one wanted to volunteer to create something more effective. Over the years, we have had six or seven different evaluation systems. And every couple of years, somebody says they are bored with this one or that one and we change. No one has ever liked any system we have ever had.”

Things Don’t Fit In the Box

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I was asked to stop by and visit Patricia. Apparently, she had fallen behind in her managerial responsibilities to conduct performance reviews with her team members.

“Why the long face?” I asked.

“You were sent by the enemy,” she joked.

“Yes, and the enemy wants to know why you are resisting the performance appraisals for your team members.”

Patricia paused and slid a form across her desk. “They got this off of some website. We’re supposed to use it as the basis for these performance appraisals. Seems like a big waste of time.”

“How so?”

“Three reasons,” she replied.

  • The form doesn’t specifically apply to the task assignments my team works on.
  • It asks me to rate things on a scale from (1-5). But it leaves me in the dark as to what a (2) means. Or a (4).
  • I have to write down some comment on any rating that is not a (3). It’s easier just to rate everything a (3), but what’s the point?
  • I know if I show this to my team member, it’s just going to start an argument.
  • The instructions tell me to think about situations from the entire past year and describe them in this little box. Things don’t fit in the box.

“That’s five things,” I observed.

“Sorry, I just got carried away.”

Calibration Time

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From yesterday’s comments, some great questions.

Question:
I’ve been thinking about performance appraisals and Time Span lately because many of our front line workers are Stratum I. We have a weekly scorecard and we measure and reward every week, which fits their time span.

Our healthcare company is licensed and, as a stipulation of our license, we’re required to “review” each employee annually. Since I’ve been introduced to Time Span, I can see how these annual reviews are a waste of time for Strata I and II. So, what’s the most meaningful way to comply with our license without wasting everyone’s time?

Response:
First, if it is a requirement of your license, you are not wasting anyone’s time. If you lose your license for non-compliance, then you will be out of business. So take this very seriously. The paperwork should be completed and conform with accepted guidelines.

Now, let’s talk about making Performance Feedback meaningful. You have correctly identified that goals should be reviewed concurrently as they are achieved, meaning, if a team member is working on weekly goals, then they should be reviewed on a weekly basis. It shouldn’t take a lot of time, but a few minutes each week to acknowledge a “job well done,” will pay large dividends to the organization.

So, what would be important to talk about at least once a year? I call it calibration time. Elliott Jaques called it the “Personal Effectiveness Appraisal.” And it doesn’t have to happen ONLY once a year. Calibration should occur at least once a year or any other time the manager sees an observable change in capability (usually positive).

Here are the questions.

  • Is the team member functioning satisfactorily, given the Time Span task assignments in the role?
  • If yes, could this team member function effectively in task assignments with a longer Time Span?
  • If no, could this team member function effectively in task assignments with a shorter Time Span?

This calibration discussion has three participants, the team member, the manager and the manager-once-removed. This discussion rarely takes more than ten minutes.

The brilliance of Elliott’s discovery is that we can use the Time Span of a goal to calibrate and match task assignments to the capability of a team member. This matching is designed to keep people engaged in task assignments that are both well-suited and challenging. What happens to job satisfaction when people are challenged to their maximum level of capability? Not beyond, not below, but right at their maximum?

Because people grow and mature, this calibration should occur at least once a year or any time a manager notices a change in capability.

It’s That Time of Year

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Does your company do Annual Performance Appraisals? What is the purpose of those Performance Appraisals?

Most HR people would propose that they protect the company in the event of a termination. But here is a question to ponder. If your company is involved in litigation over a termination, which side of the table is the first to introduce your Performance Appraisals into evidence?

Gary Markle, in his book Catalytic Coaching, takes most Performance Appraisal systems to the mat. For all that we would want them to do, most often, Performance Appraisals, have the opposite effect. We think they protect us, they are used against us.

In two weeks, Working Leadership Online will tackle this subject. So I am curious, what is your experience with Performance Appraisals? Are they helpful? What is wrong with them?