Canadian HR Reporter

STRATEGIC CAPABILITY NETWORK'S PANEL of thought leaders brings decades of experience from the senior ranks of Canada's business community. eir commentary puts HR management issues into context and looks at the practical implications of proposals and policies. CANADIAN HR REPORTER August 7, 2017 EXECUTIVE SERIES 11 www.scnetwork.ca Join our professional community of Canadian HR & Organizational Leaders: • Connecting @ monthly events • Collaborating with peers • Challenging conventional thinking The Power of Human Capital CULTIVATING LEADERSHIP FOR 35 YEARS Great Leaders GROW www.scnetwork.ca Authenticity and fairness key elements of organizational culture Four SCNetwork members engage in a back-and-forth on Ilana Hechter's presentation Tracey White: Performance management has to be the biggest driver of manager and employee discontent at organizations. Last month, we learned that fully 97 per cent of managers say performance management is ineff ective, takes the most time of any HR program, and adds the least amount of value. Research by the Corporate Executive Board also found that current measures of performance management are at best inad- equate and at worst counterpro- ductive. But, I was surprised to learn that 71 per cent of orga- nizations operate performance management systems described by Mercer's Ilana Hechter as "one size fi ts all." Not for nothing is this conten- tious system under scrutiny. When work is project-driven, organiza- tions are matrixed and workforces are ever more diverse, isn't it be- yond time to admit the perfor- mance equation has changed? In our knowledge-driven econ- omy, creating value requires open information fl ow, teamwork and collaboration. In a 2012 article, Vanity Fair famously analyzed Microsoft's "lost decade" and pinned some of the blame for the company's loss of momentum on its stacked ranking performance management system. Microsoft blamed the dys- functional program for crippling its ability to innovate. When the company abandoned the practice, a memo to employees announced: " e changes we are making are important and necessary as we work to deliver innovation and value to customers." Hechter was correct when she observed we have to move be- yond box-checking exercises that are more about the system than people. Paul Pittman: The problem with consulting surveys is that they are always 10 years behind current thinking and the results are never a surprise to anyone — we saw this too with the last sur- vey shared with SCN. Interpreting the results often means how to get participants to within fi ve years of current think- ing. It's a tough gig. Performance reviews are no ex- ception. We all know the old an- nual watershed is way past its shelf life, and the alternative involves an organizational overhaul — but so what? You are going to have to do them anyway. Authenticity and fairness are going to be far more important elements of organizational culture than ever before. An inconsistent, box-ticking, yearly yawn is neither. ere's no place for that in the new workplace: "I want to know what you think of me but only in the context of a common assess- ment model that drives a felt fair recognition." at makes sense. The importance of a perfor- mance feedback system that is an integral part of the talent man- agement system, aligned with the rhythm of the business, cannot be underestimated. For example: Are one-time goals important to a business that thrives on process excellence? How critical is leadership per- formance in a labour-intensive environment, and the timing of feedback at an organization in a fast-moving sector? Performance assessment sys- tems need to be integrated with re- ward and succession, and tailored to the profi le of the workforce — for example, its demographic. Sustained diff erentiation means one-size-fi ts-most certainly does not fi t all. Why did we ever think it would? Authenticity means figur- ing out the events that are at the heart of your business, tailoring a catalyst for examining what will improve them, and recognizing who does best at that and who needs help. Finally, it is tempting but proba- bly unwise to launch a new system in conjunction with an analytics exercise unless you have several years of interpreting data under your belt. Jan van der Hoop: Tracey, I think you nailed the root of the problem when you said this is the most expensive and least valuable HR program. Why it's even an HR program baffles me. It's fundamentally wrong. Who owns the ultimate respon- sibility for selecting, onboarding, resourcing, training, and provid- ing actionable and motivating performance feedback, if not the immediate supervisor? Sure, HR provides tools and training for their use, but they can't possibly intervene as a sur- rogate for the manager. e qual- ity of the manager-employee re- lationship is critical to the health and productivity of the work group. at relationship is sacred and, in my opinion, HR has no business being in the middle. If the manager is not adept at managing the human dynamic (distinct from managing proj- ects and tasks, to Paul's point) — teaching, coaching, pushing, challenging, cheering, as appro- priate — then they simply are not equipped to lead people. And, no amount of performance manage- ment forms, reports, policies or training fl owing out of HR is go- ing to make up for that lack of capability. In fact, it makes it worse. As Hechter said, performance management happens in the context of a relationship, a con- versation. You really don't need anything more elaborate than the back of an envelope to document it. If you have great managers (meaning the right people with the right training), you can rest comfortably in the knowledge that performance management is happening every day, in every interaction with a manager. And, if you don't have great managers, it'll never happen — regardless how much you huff and puff . Silvia Lulka: is topic evokes such strong views. To get to the heart of it, we need to ask: "What purpose does this process serve today?" (Or any other process, for that matter). To your point, Paul, I think au- thenticity and fairness are part of the answer and, as you note, Jan, this rests on the quality of rela- tionships and conversations. Tracey, I'm glad you picked up on the "one-size-fi ts-all" as it often ends up as "one-size-fi ts-none." Bottom line: e process needs to be meaningful for organiza- tions, leaders and employees. It needs to enable the right fre- quency of two-way conversations that connect organizational, team and individual goals and facilitate learning and refl ection. In some organizations, that ca- dence may be weekly or quarterly. In some, it may include quantita- tive measures that easily tie to a rating number; in others, it will be more qualitative. As with so much of what we do, the "how" of this topic (how to meet the needs of the organi- zation, how to enable learning, how to have the conversation) is as important as, or more impor- tant than, the "what" (such as the process itself and the ratings). White: This may have been one of our most impassioned discussions. As Silvia notes, per- formance management certainly engenders strong emotion. May- be that's the key here — it evokes emotion because appraisal is one of the most emotion-laden activi- ties we can engage in as human beings. The Neuroleadership Insti- tute's David Rock tells us that no business process could be better conceived to evoke the primitive fi ght-or-fl ight response. We like to think of business processes as rational — clearly performance management is one that needs to be reconsidered. It's time to do better. PANELLISTS: • Jan G. van der Hoop, president of Fit First Technologies in Toronto • Tracey White, owner and managing director at Strategy in Action in Toronto • Paul Pittman, founder and president of the Human Well in Toronto • Silvia Lulka, director of coaching at Rogers Communications in Toronto Paul Pittman Jan van der Hoop Tracey White Silvia Lulka Performance management happens in the context of a conversation. You really don't need anything more elaborate than the back of an envelope to document it.

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