Connecting Everyday Work With Performance Goals

Every people manager will agree that connecting day to day work with performance and development goals is very important. Almost every customer that spoke to in the past few years told me that they want their employees to know why they are going what they are doing. Connecting day-to-day work with goals is a hard thing to do. Just think about how many times last year you went to your company's goals management system to see if your daily work aligns with what your goals are. Even if you go there it is probably useless because, in most cases, your goals become obsolete the moment they are written down.

We are attempting to address this in Career OnDemand. Any employee will be able to send email messages and calendar appointments to Career OnDemand and later attach them to his or her goal in Career OnDemand. An employee can forward an email or appointment from any email system, even from a smart phone or a tablet. An employee can do this without having to install a plug-in or downloading an app.

The moment an email or appointment is attached to a goal, the employee's manager becomes aware of the work and the context of the work. This leads to a meaningful conversation the next time they meet and probably will lead to a discussion about the next steps or course corrections. If the daily work is not aligned with the goals in the systems, the manager can point that out to the employee. If the employee is doing meaningful work that is not aligned with the goals in the system, perhaps it is time to have another look at the goals and modify them.

If you were at the HR Technology Conference last month, you may have seen David Ludlow present these concepts and talk about them at great length.

We are working hard to simplify things and make complex concepts work with current technologies that people already use. Almost of of these ideas and suggestions came from customers who co-innovated with us. If you are interested in co-innovating with the Career OnDemand team, please reach out to @esdediego. We would love to show a preview of Career OnDemand months before general availability and listen to your thoughts.

The History And Possible Future Of Performance Management

This info graphic from Mashable is so well done, I could not resist posting it here.

I would like to highlight the term reputation, mentioned in the last section of this info graphic. I suspect reputation building frameworks will become as important as formal credentialing frameworks. In other words, employers will care as much about what your reputation among peers is as the degree you have. This is happening today. But the frameworks for employees to build  a professional reputation within the walls of a company and for employers to verify that professional reputation is not robust yet.

 My colleagues who follow my blog and follow me on twitter know more about what I do at work and what I am capable of than my own team members. This is sad. 

We are trying to address this in SAP Career OnDemand. Career OnDemand is designed with the hypothesis that employees will take charge of their performance, their reputation and their career. We also believe that reputation built using verifiable contribution matters as much, if not more, as formal credentials. The next few years are going to be interesting.

Interesting Companies In The Performance Improvement Area

My research interest is in the area of  on-going performance improvement of employees. I think about how can a person best improve his or her performance on an on-going basis for the benefit of the employer's short term business goals and the employee's long term career goals. I have been researching the area for a while. So are several other innovative people. These are some companies I admire for their innovative thinking.

1. Rypple
Rypple focuses on coaching and feedback to improve performance.

2. WorkSimple
Worksimple makes goals social. They explain their approach very well here.

3. Sonar6
Sonar6 focuses on performance appraisal.

Do you admire other innovative companies in the employee performance improvement area? If yes, could you please leave a comment. Thanks.

What If Only 3 Out Of Eleven Soccer Players Knew Where To Kick The Ball?

According to a research quoted in Stephen Covey's book The Eighth Habit, Only 1 in 5 employees said that they have a clear line of sight between their tasks and their team's or organization goals. Stephen says that this is a bit like only 3 players in a soccer team knowing where to kick the ball. Would you support, let alone play, for a team like that?

Any yet, we work for organizations that do not provide a clear line of sight between what we need to accomplish and how out actions help our teams and organizations accomplish their goals.

German National Soccer Team. Thankfully, they know where to kick the ball. I am a fan.

While no software can replace leadership and good management, software can enable some change in behavior. From my interviews with employees in several organizations, I learned that a simple page where goals and activities are listed can provide an employee with significant line-of-sight to organizational goals. Do you have such a page to go to in your organization?