A culture of performance
What do we mean by a culture of performance?
A visible and explicit pattern of behaviour, actions
and values,
Working to achieve the organisation's overall objectives,
That encourages honest evaluation, feedback and appraisal,
And informs decision making.
Built upon collective and individual responsibility.
Responsive to changing circumstances.
That encourages self regulation, trust and learning.
How well do you do against this criteria?
The problem
So often we see dysfunctional behaviour, game playing,
and selfish local ambition rather than collective team working.
Too many measures can create the sense that we are just "feeding
the beast". Too many targets create confusion about which
are important. Yet we know that measures motivate, what gets measured
gets managed and what gets incentivised gets done first.
What is the answer? What are the underlying problems
that cause this?
Frameworks, methodologies and software do not create
a performance culture
These tools are great at collecting the information
and displaying it effectively. But, that is not sufficient. Implementing
tools, approaches, scorecards and frameworks without addressing
the cultural issues, tends to simply freeze any existing poor
practices. It just embeds the status quo.
It is about making change happen and managing that
change
Implementing any performance management approach
is a change management project. This begs the question: What levers
of change are you using to implement performance management? Are
you just measuring performance? Are you trying to improve performance?
Are you trying to change the performance culture? If so, How?
An engaged workforce
A key difference in the 'culture of performance' is that people
use and provide information that is useful for them. In contrast,
"Feeding the beast" demands reports, measures
and targets that often appear to make little sense. In a culture
of performance that information has already been used locally
to improve performance (and gets reported as well).
A team engaged with heads and hearts will make a
big difference. That is why we help you influence the thinking,
motivation and attitudes of your staff.
Case studies and further information
You can access papers that explain these in more detail from
our Strategic Performance Management
case studies page. These case studies include: joined-up
management, more focused management meetings, joined-up middle
management, collective thinking, joined-up incentives and
many other topics.
There are two specific articles on the culture of performance:
- "Making the case"
explains how a culture of performance can improve
the organisation's performance.
- "A culture of performance"
explains in detail the issues of measures, targets,
mind reading and learning in a culture of performance .
Go to our Strategic Performance management
case studies to access these.
If you want to explore how you can develop a culture of performance,
then talk to us.
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