I’ve been reminded by a sales team that I work with that their annual performance review time is fast approaching. I’ve been asked to give my top three tips for conducting a good Performance review for their management briefing.

The emphasis in appraisal is Praise
There was a time when the team hated the event. The emphasis always seemed to be focussed on the negative aspects of performance. Negative statements have far greater impact on an individual than a hundred good things that may be said.

I know that it’s important that a correct picture of performance is recorded. But the emphasis, as Dawn French mentioned in the video Arts film on the performance Review, should be on PRAISE

Tips
The first tip I’ve often given to those conducting the PR is to ask the team member to “Self-appraise”. Asking “How would you assess your performance?” often allows the resulting self criticism to be toned down and saves negative comments being made that cause offence and upset.

Tip two
Prepare. This is the most important meeting of the year with the team member (for the person being appraised). It’s their chance to talk about their career, aspirations and development. As such it’s polite, efficient and good management to prepare and treat the meeting seriously.

Top three
Listen…And listen to what’s not said and allow time for explanation. Some people are shy and need coaxing to speak. Don’t hurry a PR it’s a chance to learn how the employee feels

Finally, what happens after the meeting…”The notes get filed”.
But isn’t there follow-up?
Remember, more CVs (Resumes) get updated after a poor PR than at any other time!

In announcing that Lloyds TSB are to shed 15,000 jobs over the next three years probably contained little surprise to most people. Indeed there will be many that will be quite pleased that some bankers are reaping what they sowed without realising that the middle management and back-room boys losing their jobs are not those who will be receiving big bonuses over the next three years.

Restructured teams have an increased chance of failure
My real concern is that five thousand job losses each year, for three years, will mean a vast number of teams being restructured. The problem with team restructure is that only 60% tend to deliver targets. That means that 40% of teams fail to deliver on expectations. That’s one big storm of disruption for Lloyds TSB to navigate.

Costs can be huge
The cost of such failure in lost opportunity terms can often amount to ten times the salary of the team and in banking circles that can be  huge! ( a team salary of £1million could produce a potential lost opportunity cost of £10m) However, when one’s focus on savings will be judged on salaries saved the actual costs of the restructure often get ignored.

That is until financial statistics reveal that further jobs have to be cut because the anticipated results haven’t been met!

The Office for National Statistics as reported on the BBC have reported today that the UK saw its service sector sales have the biggest fall in fifteen months April. Blame was allocated to the Royal Wedding, an extra bank holiday and the hot weather which seems to me to be a similar excuses as trains running late due to leaves on the line.

Is it sensible to expect that every month and every year things will always improve?
A few years ago a friend of mine went to his doctor and said that he felt depressed. He described how some days he felt great whilst on others he felt “tired and down”. His Doctor explained that this was normal and indeed it actually has a medical name.

Isn’t business the same? One month will be great and often another poor and it’s actually destructive to expect that growth must always be the norm. Reviewing things as they become quiet and business situations change is healthy. The best time for such reviews is when things are quiet.

I’ve spent some time with Ryan Taylor, my personal fitness trainer at my gym, who is probably the most natural coach and mentor that I’ve ever come across. Why is he different? Well firstly he listens to what I want to achieve, is flexible when I want to add more goals and encourages my strengths and accepts my weaknesses whilst improving technique to overcomes them. Most importantly, he makes the whole process fun, varied and interesting.

He’s not soft
The workouts are always hard, he’s not soft on me, far from it! He encourages and compliments me when I do well and isn’t critical when I’ve tried my best but not succeeded. I’m just asked and motivated to have another go to get it right. I can’t remember not wanting to!
What is most surprising is that he’s only in his early twenties and I don’t think he realises how good a coach and mentor he is!

What could business learn?
Over the past few months I’ve began to think that business managers could learn a great deal from Ryan’s technique. Creating systems to catch people out, identifying weaknesses and spending time training poor performers and achievers may not be the most productive use of management time. Instead it would be more productive to develop people’s strengths.

SWOT analysis
We’ve all looked at a SWOT analysis at work. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats are identified and discussed but too often the emphasis focusses on the weaknesses rather than developing the strengths. That can and I’ve often been asked to sort out the resulting paralysis.

In going to the gym I want to enjoy it. Doing the exercises and playing the ball games I enjoy improves my fitness. People working in business are not very different. If Ryan can ensure that as well as enabling me to feel good about my fitness regime but that I don’t neglect the areas I’m also weak at. Then business managers should be able to do the same.

There is a lesson here!

You would think that the topics of talent shortage and managing employees productivity were two business issues. I’ve had a few conversations with senior Directors bemoaning the shortage of talent, particularly in IT, banking and technology and both have been linked to how to manage employee productivity.

The Talent Crunch
Most people would think that with the financial crisis that finding good talent would be easy, but in fact this isn’t the case for many specialist areas. Indeed the Manpower Group report that a third of companies report difficulties in finding good talent. There is a talent crunch in India, where it’s reported that sixty seven percent of companies are unable to find the people they need. In Brazil the figure is thirty four percent and the shortage is pushing up wages and inflation.

The skills shortages in these countries is likely to have an affect on our own talent pool and attract our own talent towards high salaries and a better style of living than can be gained within Europe or the USA. This will be true even of bankers who see career progression in terms of London and New York.

Managing Employee productivity
If most businesses can’t find all the talent that it requires, or afford it when it can, then it needs to invest some time and money to improve the productivity of its existing talent. That’s the reason that people have been asking me how to measure, manage and improve their people’s performance and productivity.

It’s been interesting that in the mind of the Directors I’ve spoken to that they seem to have a vision of a “One size fits all” solution. The problem is that there isn’t a one size fits all nor is there an immediate solution to making internal talent more productive. Different strategies need to be employed for salespeople as opposed to IT,  Senior staff as opposed to Non-Executive Directors and so on. In the long-run, however, it might be the only viable and affordable solution. 

The is one business commodity that’s in short supply and it’s time. Over the past few weeks I’ve come accross a number of teams that have been spending hours and days slaving over business proposals for work from potential clients in 2011.

I will admit to not having made too many business proposals for work. For the most part I seem to have been the only person in the frame and the largest discussion has been around my availability and fee so I don’t count myself as an expert in this area. However, from my point of view, the process seems to be one-sided and to the complete benefit of the recipient as opposed to the author.

The proposal details of what needs to be done, how it will be done, who will deliver the work as well as the costs and the benefits to the client and all illustrated with as many charts and graphs as the “Egyptian Book of the Dead” and can often run into many pages. When done they are then emailed out and possibly posted with a flourish, self-congratulation from the authors and often into oblivion.

There follows a period of ignored phone messages and emails to the potential client to see if the work has been received, read and what the “next step”. Often the paper is used as fodder to negotiate price or other aspects of the contract with “preferred suppliers” or as “proof” that the correct “best practice” procedures have been completed when awarding contractual work.

I wonder that as such applications are used as a “negotiation tool” by a potential clients that it is, in fact, a business benefit to them that it would  be fair to invoice for the time taken in producing them. Then they could be honestly used to negotiate prices down with other suppliers, used to justify “best practice” and so on.

In the unlikely event that the contract was awarded then the invoice could then be discounted against the eventual bill. I might try this idea out to see if it works.

This is an answer I made to a question on Linkedin today about the failure of leaders to sack under- performing people. I thought it worthwhile also posting my answer onto my blog so that more of my network could read it.

I believer that business is going through a revolution.

In past credit squeezes firms and Governments would shed talent to reduce costs (the UK Government is about to do this again by reducing civil service personnel by up to 25%). The result was that essential knowledge and skills were lost and recovery took longer as a result.
So, this time round, firms have attempted to retain their talent, even those less productive, as leaders hope for a quick upturn. The problem is that the upturn is slow in the west.

Further problems are that with coming food inflation and possible grain shortages, extended insecurity as the credit crunch continues and Government policy that increases tax whilst reduces spending businesses are now being forced to start to look to their staff costs. This means that some of the “good” people will be shed as well as the “bad” and that the trend is to hire part-time employees.

I suspect that the result is that the “business revolution” will generate a significant percentage of the working population having a number of part-time jobs as opposed to a single full time position. (including professional firms such as lawyers, accountants and financiers)

There is security in this position for employees who may be “shed or fired” in that income is not reliant on one employer and totally and immediately lost on redundancy whilst the employer has a capability of expanding and contracting a workforce more easily.

So, in my opinion, it’s not “under-performers being hired or fired” it’s that we may be witnessing a change in the way employment may work in the future.

Increasing team productivity will be the mission critical task of most businesses over the next two years. See Here for more details on an event that you need to be attending.

A couple of days ago I was talking to a friend of mine, Chrissie Lightfoot, who has written a great blog titled The end of Lawyers on the changes to how the legal profession will be changing. The article is very revealing and Chrissie has made some excellent observations.

Her blog has caused some discussion with  friends who use the internet for business. It’s been agreed that now we can offer experts in India, China, Thailand and all over the world work that would normally be done very expensively such as marketing, research, print design, professional advice and even pay someone to write our blogs,  monitor the results and only pay for what we have had satisfactorily delivered at a fraction of the price. Why would we want to hire expensive people of firms?

The result must be that professional firms in Europe and the USA must consider that to survive they must identify Micro-niche products that can’t be easily replicated.

Maria has held a departmental staff meeting and told her team that she is conscious that Christine (her assistant) is overworked and under pressure and is therefore removing some of her responsibilities. The result is that Christine will undertake fewer new staff interviews and more research. Maria will delegate staff interviews amongst the other team members as people are available. Christine sees this as a removal of a key part of her job and the scope of her work has been reduced.

This afternoon Maria has a meeting with the Sales Director and Project Manager to look at restructuring the remaining areas of the sales force. The meeting will identify those posts and branches in the north of England that The Sales Director wants to merge and reduce the headcount by three managers and five sales administration staff. Maria is being consulted to advise on retaining the people that the Sales Manager wants to retain whilst “letting go” those he sees as being less capable.