5 Responses

1. have you considered a 360 degree feedback tool?
   Carolyn
   behaviours are seen daily by the people who work with the manager concerned, not only their boss, but also their peers, customers and staff.
   If you used a 360 tool you should get a genuine assessment of their behaviours (to all groups)over the period.

   This then needs to be sensibly linked to KPIs but it should be workable.

   In a previous life I worked for an organisation where the boss was mad on measuring output and performance and could do it with the external facing teams/members…his problem was doing it with internal functions like HR and facilities (and even himself!)
   I put in a 360 internal survey…linked to KPIs for improving service, reducing waiting time, cutting overheads etc….it worked.

2. Ask the Managers what there KPI’s should be.
   Everybody is keen to tell everybody else how they should behave.
   Nobody seems to give the individual the credit or opportunity to demonstrate that they know how to behave.

   Look at what happened to Semco when Ricardo Semler released his workforce from the yoke of misguided management.

   Instead of being stifled by traditional management set targets and KPI’s their performance soared when they were allowed to set their own targets and be responsible for their own performance.

   Bob Gately of Gately Consulting, Massachusetts produced this list.
   The list was created by Middle Managers in the US. It was their response to a survey that asked them what the top ten motivators for their employees were.

   1 – Salary
   2 – Bonuses
   3 – Vacation
   4 – Retirement
   5 – Other Benefits & Perks
   ——— the money line ———-
   6 – Interesting work
   7 – Involved in decisions
   8 – Feedback
   9 – Training
   10 – Respect

   These middle managers assumed that they knew what motivated their workforce.
   When the Workforce were asked to produce the same list No’s 6 to 10 were the top five and No’s 1 to 5 were below the line.

   These managers by assuming they knew what was best for their workforce, and getting it completely wrong, were only ever able to have a destructive effect on their workforce’s ability to perform.

   If instead these managers had taken the time to ask what the workforce really wanted and given them the respect of acting on what the workforce told them then, as managers, it would have been possible for them to add value to the workforce instead of preventing them from performing by failing to address their basic needs.

   In the same way managers, who are also human beings, react badly to having targets and KPI’s imposed on them.

   It may be time to stop assuming that employees are incapable of looking after themselves and start instead to realise that they are skilled and talented human beings who appear to be incapable only because they have never been given the opportunity to show how truly excellent they really are.

   If you want performance, let the managers decide for themselves how they will be judged.

   Peter

3. Arian Associates Ltd
   Why not map their performance by linking it to the Management Standards used for Management NVQ’s at whatever level they operate ? They are specifically designed to do what you seem to be heading towards – seeing if your managers are doing their jobs to expected standards.

4. competencies
   Carolyn
   Forgive me if NVQ’s were the answeer but I would suggest providinga menu of competencies and then let them pisck the appropriate ones (or more appropriate ones). It depends what you mean by KPI’s though
   KPI’s tend to be measurable in percentages or £ competencies are rather more subjective.
   Peter

5. KPI’s
   There are lots of suppliers out there who will be able to sell you an e360 system which will provide a lot of data for linkage to your KPI’s. In a previous existence I developed “individual personal scorecards” which had clear links to the business KPI’s and to their Learning logs. If you have a set of behaviours and capabilities etc etc it’d be quite easy to link to a formal system, or even through to an LMS. Comes down I suppose to the culture you have, the culture you want and how quickly….and whether you want to link to to soemthing “practical” like a “dialogue for development” approach.