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A culture of performance

What do we mean by a culture of performance?

A culture of performance is,
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 are great at providing the tools to make it happen. They are great at collecting the information and displaying it effectively, so it can be seen and used. But, that is not sufficient. Implementing tools, approaches, scorecards and frameworks without addressing the cultural issues, tends to simply freeze any existing poor practices. The status quo is further embedded.

If you are implementing a balanced scorecard or a performance management project, you are implementing a change project. You are going to be making changes and having to manage change. If you fail to realise this and fail to manage the process of change that affects those involved, you will fail.

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.