I'd like to help a client media company find a 'cool' name for its performance management process, a name which is memorable for the right reasons. Have you heard of names which may fit the bill? The process in question covers objective setting, appraisal (including 360), development planning, and reward.
Katrina Wray
9 Responses
How about “doing the business”
How about “People News” – catchy for a media company
How about “Updating people!”
See whay you think
Think about the future and excellence
No particular non-cheesy brand names come to mind but try incorporating future looking, excellence, different and better etc into the brand imagary. Start by considering what the process/system is trying to achieve. Peformance Management and all common associated titling (e.g. appraisal) have connotations of ‘being done to’ and of individuals having to be managed. Your client employs adult knowledge workers – people who should intrinsically be self motivated and self directed etc. You therefore need to avoid adding anything that is morale sapping. So, the only reason to look back is to plan to do things differently and better in the future. Achieving excellence has to be the name of the game – excellence in customer service, creative development, cost management etc. Better still, get a small group of movers and shakers together in your client organisation and get them to come up with the name – you’ll get better buy in then.
cheers
Richard Bryce
Try being creative with media type words
The secret of naming is to think laterally. Brainstorm what you are trying to communicate via the name of this process and then group similar trends. then use things like Thesaurus, dictionary to get other words which describe these trends. Good naming of anything is not easy and as with all things creative you MUST suspend judgement on any ideas in the early stages otherwise you end up only with the cheesy old things you had before! One example of naming for this kind of management process (not quite the same but similar) I helped develop was in the medical arena and we came up with the name “Future Pulse” which I hope illustrates what I’m waffling on about. Really happy to help more as I used to do this for a living! Give me a call 01799 533744
How about…
How about “Actioneering” – at least it suggests that it’s about doing something!!
Why break away from the traditional?
Why not refer to it as Professional Development, the appraisal, objective setting etc. are covered by the development and the reward is covered by the professional, which as you will know, can be defined as being paid for expertise.
Hook in strategy; make it participative
I agree with the comments about making the process of acquiring the “brand name” a participative, creative process. The strategy underlying the initiative will help with the thinking – why is the business doing this? Ideas on how to get creative thinking and catchy phrases coming out include: get people into a room that inspires creative thinking (ie not in the middle of their office!). Get them to bring 5 different magazines each. Share the strategy and get them to spend time going through the mags and pulling out pictures, phrases, adverts, concepts that inspire them and in their mind reflect the concept and strategy. Pool these ideas together (get people to share explain their own work) and then use them to inspire and bring out the catchy phrases.
Valuing Individual Performance
I hope it’s not cheesy. I think it works at a number of levels – Valuing Individuals, Valuing Performance, Individual and Team Performance etc – as well as the more obvious “VIP”
Why not ROAD?
Hi Katrina
Why not use ROAD – it’s the acronym from the elements of the process you’re bringing in(reward, objective setting, appraisal, development) and implies both a journey and movement with the process as a map. What could be better, or easier to remember?
Progression, improvement,
Progression, improvement, agreement, prioritising action, direction, development (as in the business broadly).