Lack of alignment between your company goals and individual performance management can cause a lack of productivity, or worse, great performance in the wrong direction! Instead, build ownership mentality and an aligned team through role scorecards, performance visibility, and psychological safety.
Performance Management: Aligning Individual and Enterprise Goals
Effective performance management strategies begin with the individual. You’ve established role responsibilities and individual goals, but you’re still not seeing the level of productivity you were aiming for.
If your individual and enterprise goals are not aligned, it can be difficult to achieve high company performance.
In this article, we share how individual performance management drives company results. Through this, we identify how to overcome some common challenges that leadership and organizations often face.
Ownership Mentality Through Role Scorecards
In the first article of our performance management series , we established the importance of using role scorecards. This is imperative in setting up clearly defined individual goals and targets.
In order for individuals to feel like stakeholders in the company, organizations must be clear on their annual goals. Annual goals should be broken down into shorter timeframes: quarterly, monthly, and weekly targets. From there, it’s all about the marriage of three pillars: organizational goals, team goals, and individual goals.
Sean Fitzgerald explains Achieving Organizational Success Through Goal Clarity
All team members and their role objectives should be aligned with the overarching goals of the enterprise. Key performance indicators identified in each scorecard consist of 1 or 2 key measures for that specific role. These KPIs are a result of the breakdown of higher-level goals into actionable steps.
- Organizational goals are broken down into team goals that are assigned to different departments within a company.
- These team goals are divided into specific objectives that are assigned to individuals depending on their role within the company.
Company performance can be impacted when the results of individuals don’t “add up” to the targets for the team and the organization. This is a great strategy to help leaders identify gaps in the alignment flow. For example, the organization’s sales target should equal the sum of the targets for everyone individually. If not, the breakdown of organizational goals needs to be revisited.
Before we move on from role scorecards, there’s one crucial takeaway to note. Organizational objectives tend to be set annually and appraised quarterly. However, employee check-ins should be happening on a much more regular basis.
Every employee should be involved in a weekly check-in to review their development plan. Seeing how individual contributions have an impact leads everyone to feel like they have a personal stake in the organization.
Improve Performance with Visibility in the Workplace
If your enterprise goals aren’t visible for everyone to see, what is motivating your team to meet their targets? It’s simple. Visibility to goals and the progress of these goals drive higher performance across the board.
For key performance indicators to be truly effective, they must be prominently displayed and easily accessible. They should be the cornerstone of employee communication and meetings. Try giving these KPIs significance by incorporating them into your weekly meetings and overall enterprise performance management strategy.
Goal transparency helps all team members understand how their daily tasks tie into and align with the company goals they are expected to accomplish. Some additional advantages of goal visibility are:
- Clarity - When company-wide objectives are set, employees need to know what they are working on and their underlying rationale. Managers have the responsibility to ensure individual and team goals are in line with the overall strategic direction.
- Accountability - Team members are often more inclined to meet their targets when goals and progress are visible. This approach inspires employees to take full ownership of their work.
- Progress - Tracking progress in real-time allows organizations to constantly have a pulse on the status of projects. You can identify if employees need additional support and provide feedback and necessary critiques to advance company performance.
Wherever you have the chance to display your goals and KPIs, seize the opportunity. Post them in the lunch room, on the walls of every conference room, and on the company intranet. Clearly illustrate both the target for each KPI and the progress made toward achieving it.
Every employee and team should have a dashboard. When your goals and KPIs are visible, you’ll see performance levels start to increase. Discussing values and trends daily will make your team more committed to action plans and invested in the overall success of the company.
Psychological Safety in the Workplace
There are five common characteristics you can expect to find in high-performing teams. By far the strongest indicator of team success and productivity is psychological safety. The core principle of psychological safety revolves around team members feeling safe. They can be candid, vulnerable, and take risks without worrying about facing repercussions or adverse consequences.
How does this tie into high performance management and aligning goals? Consider this: if your employees don’t feel like they are part of a safe environment, is it reasonable to expect high engagement?
When you invite participation, employees are encouraged to get involved and take ownership. Ask open questions like, “What options are you thinking of? What ideas do you have?”. The only dumb questions are the ones that are not asked.
Reinforcing the purpose is another way to promote psychological safety in the workplace. Bring it back to the why. Why are your goals what they are? Why are those specific individual goals crucial to achieving overall objectives? How is holding each other accountable beneficial to everyone?
Employees should feel safe asking for help if they are falling behind. A safe environment allows organizations to confront uncomfortable and even unpopular perspectives in a productive way.
Unleashing the Potential of Your Organization
To achieve organizational success, you must have alignment between your team and your overall business objectives. This can be a key differentiator between lacklustre company performance and a team that is driven to achieve results.
Learn more about analyzing your own organization’s strategic goal alignment and the steps you can take to achieve cohesion and improve performance management .To discuss the benefits of performance management, connect with us or consider attending one of our upcoming leadership events.
