Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Objectives and Key Results (OKR) (23-slide PowerPoint presentation). Successful organizations are using Objectives and Key Results (OKR) now. OKRs are efficient way to track company and team goals and measure their progress. It helps every organization's success by cutting out unimportant goals and focusing on what truly is important within the organization.
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Deviation in Performance results in failure to achieve our set objectives, which consequently leads to criticism from stakeholders, among other more severe consequences.
One reason for the inability to meet Performance objectives is that individual employee goals do not match up with the organization’s larger goals.
Performance Alignment occurs when actual Performance synchronizes with expected Performance.
Expected Performance ensues when an individual’s conduct generates the envisioned results or outcomes.
Employee Performance is vital in Performance Alignment.
Performance Alignment basically means making sure that all employees throughout the organization are purposefully endeavoring in the direction of the organization’s goals.
Performance Alignment happens relatively spontaneously within small setups. Growing organizations face the challenge of not being able to work in close quarters with all employees, and thus misalignment with the organization’s greater vision and goals can ensue.
People usually do not intentionally go adrift from the organizational goals; the fact is that it takes a great deal of deliberate exertion to keep a budding or larger organization aligned.
Performance Alignment is different from Performance Management in this aspect. Although Performance Alignment and Performance Management are strongly associated, they arise from distinct objectives and mentalities.
- Performance Management is related to Productivity and achieving Performance goals.
- Performance Alignment Mindset concerns itself with the manner in which the team’s endeavors work up to the organization’s eventual objectives and broader vision.
- Performance Management mentality focuses on tangible skills, augmented and efficient Productivity, and training that supports this mindset.
- Focus in Performance Alignment is not only on the team Performance but also on whether what they are undertaking is the correct area to be working on.
Performance Alignment is affected by 6 key factors that relate to individual as well as collective Performance.
- Clarity
- Commitment
- Competence
- Cooperation
- Connections
- Circumstances
All 6 factors project people as “living control systems” who are goal-oriented and try to make their perceptions match their expectations.
Let us delve a little deeper into some details of these factors.
Clarity
Clarity means figuring out what the success variable is and what its value needs to be for it to be considered a success.
Individuals who exert control measure up their perception of the present state with what they envision—their desired state.
Commitment
Individuals who act as “living control systems” display the characteristic of being committed to the outcomes they have set for themselves.
Performers for whom the desired outcome is set by the managers may not have the same level of commitment as someone who has bought into the outcome. Managers and workers should both take steps to make sure that enough commitment exists.
Commitment is a combination of 2 conditions: the Contribution of outcomes to the broader objectives and the Positive Balance of the consequences.
Competence
Competent people can vary their behavior according to circumstances in order to consistently achieve an outcome.
Such flexibility allows them to realize reasonably constant outcomes under varying circumstances.
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Performance Management (also known as Strategic Performance Management, Performance Measurement, Business Performance Management, Enterprise Performance Management, or Corporate Performance Management) is a strategic management approach for monitoring how a business is performing. It describes the methodologies, metrics, processes, systems, and software that are used for monitoring and managing the business performance of an organization.
As Peter Drucker famously said, "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it."
Having a structured and robust Strategic Performance Management system (e.g. the Balanced Scorecard) is critical to the sustainable success of any organization; and affects all areas of our organization.
Learn about our Performance Management Best Practice Frameworks here.
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