This our final article in the series of Growing Managers. We started with the Discipline of Management, covered Promoting Smart, and the last edition was running a Manager Nursery. We identified the difference between management and leadership, what attributes to look for when promoting, and how to develop from within instead of hiring from the outside. Now the question is – how do I measure performance?
Let’s start with the difference between leadership and management. Leadership is about providing people a direction, operating boundaries, and staying engaged. Management is about the impact of decisions and enabling best performance of employees.
Key Leadership Metrics
- Engagement – how involved is the leader with what is happening in their work groups?
- Teamwork – how well do their employees work together to get the job done?
- Performance – how well do leaders develop employee skills to improve performance?
Key Management Metrics
- Decision Making – what is the impact of the manager decision on the business?
- Stability – the primary role of management is to bring stability out of chaos, how well does the manager bring day-to-day stability to their work group?
- Removing Obstacles – how well does the manager identify and remove obstacles that prevent employees from doing their jobs?
How To Measure Performance?
In order to answer that question, we have to back up to the measurement skeleton that current exists in your business. Drilling down on a measurement skeleton is beyond the article. If you would like to see what we have built in client companies and our organization, checkout our download at the end of the article.
Given not much exist, here is a quick way to transform your management meetings (or start) as an effective way of measuring performance.
First, stop holding meetings that pass information better handled by email. These meetings are for the owner to access progress on business objectives and obstacles identified and handled since the last meeting. If you don’t enough people to hold a meeting, this list can be used for one-on-one meetings.
Agenda Items:
- Results to Plan – based on commitments from the last meeting, what progress you made?
- Obstacles – what obstacles did your work group encounter that were eliminated and what are remaining?
- Key Decisions – since the last meeting what decisions did you make and its impact?
- Key Contributors – since the last meeting who you in your workgroup contributed significantly to company objectives?
- Employee Suggestions – since the last meeting, do you have any input from the work group about improving the business?
- Commitments – what progress do you plan to make before the next meeting?
If this is in a management meeting, limit each person to 2 minutes per item. That forces your managers (or supervisors) to stay on topic and prevents the meeting from dragging on. My approach is to do this in 2 rounds – each person answers Agenda Items 1-3, then move to the next person. Repeat the process for items 4-6. Any drill down on issues raised in the meeting should be handled on a separate one-on-one.
I will close with a suggestion about meetings. Without formal weekly meetings or sit downs, it is hard to get a handle on what is happening. It also creates a discipline that on these 6 key issues. You are teaching managers by how you treat them how to deal with employees. The information collected will allow you to answer our original questions on how to measure Leadership and Management.
Leave a Reply