Sue Todd Commentary

Page 1 of 2 Sue Todd is the President and CEO of Corporate University Xchange.  This commentary piece reflects years of experience in the learning industry with particular focus on performance management, leadership development and learning technologies. An expert-lead dialogue is necessary to stimulate discussion and improve the global body of knowledge.  Therefore, we are always searching for contributors to further the dialog.  Feel free to refer an author or submit your own opinion piece for possible publication. Performance Management Improves Alignment, Enables Execution by Sue Todd, CEO and President, Corporate University Xchange American Idol’s Simon Cowell has taught us all a thing or two about performance feedback. He’s known best for his extremely candid reviews of bad and good performances in the world-famous singing contest. The American Idol experience has trained viewers to be more astute in recognizing a performance that is “spot on” versus a sub-par effort. Yet, voters registering weekly approvals of different singers show that their own individual preferences introduce subjective opinions about what constitutes the “best” performance. Team sports are much less subjective. Although there are obviously exceptions, final scores generally show which team ultimately won, reducing subjective opinions on whose performance was best. A good business performance also is obvious when quarterly and year-end financial results are published. But the financial picture only represents a single snapshot in time. A new competitor can emerge. A change in economic conditions can impose a work force reduction. A few bad actors might make unethical decisions that can take company performance down. These and other internal and external threats have the potential to move the company off its course at any time. A sports team has a few dozen people to pull together and carry out a defined set of activities. Good coaches can see the performance of individual players while also seeing the performance of the team as a whole. Business managers need to do the same. But good business performance is made up of hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands small performances by individuals. The performances of employees are never solo acts, but are contributions to larger group efforts, and are coordinated within the context of complex systems and processes that have significant potential to insert errors. Managers have so much activity to harness and coordinate to achieve great results that they need tools and processes that just improve their visibility into individual and team performances. Performance management is the business tool that hopes to align, integrate and track thousands of performances to focus them on a single set of objectives. It coordinates an organization process that hopes to unleash the energy, creativity and innovation of thousands of players while keeping them all focused on the pursuit of shared outcomes. Performance management also hopes to remove a large degree of subjectivity from annual assessments of employee performance by asking employees and their managers to agree and document how they will measure success. << Start < Prev 1 2 Next > End >>