By: Shawn Galloway and Terry Mathis
Recorded: 08 October 2008
Welcome to Safety Culture Excellence®. Today’s topic: Performance Management - A Simple Model to Remember. My name is Shawn Galloway, and I’m proud to be your host.
Hello, from South Wales. You know, there are many things I love about working with global organizations to help them understand and improve their safety cultures and reach and sustain that level of excellence. My favorite is the opportunity we’re provided to take a multidimensional approach within many different industries. Because each engagement is unique, the principles we apply will vary.
Of all the background sciences, however, one of my preferred fields has always been performance management. All you have to do is a simple search, and you’ll find that there are some fantastic books and other information available to you. In the audio podcast this week, we thought we would share one of our simple models that you’ll find is easy to understand and, most importantly, easy to repeat. Have a safe week. Here we go.
Shawn Galloway:
So, Terry, there’s a performance management model that we use often, and I thought it would be important to share it with our listeners. Would you indulge me?
Terry Mathis:
Sure. There are four very important parts to this model. In fact, there’s only four parts to this model. So each one of them becomes increasingly important when you simplify the model out here, right? But, one of the really important points that a lot of managers miss is that they are stuck in the old-school of what we used to call MBO, or Management by Objectives. They think of what needs to be done, and this is what they communicate to people. The problem is, it doesn’t tell people how to get it done. Now, if you’re talking to a high-level manager, giving them an objective, and letting them decide the battle plan, can be a feasible thing to do.
But in most cases, we’re not talking to high-level managers. We’re talking to people who have to go out and actually get the job done. So, do we tell them how to get the job done, or do we just tell them what the job is? And a lot of people really fall prey to this. We call this: setting behavioral targets. Now, why behaviors? Well, behaviors are different than objectives. If we tell somebody, “I want you to look better.” Well, what do they do? Do they go out and buy new clothes? Do they go to the salon and have their hair and nails done? What do people do to look better? A lot of times, we are thinking clearly, but we’re not communicating clearly in this instance.
We’re telling people what we would like to accomplish, but we’re not telling them specifically what to do. And there are cases and cases of this out there in the world where unclear objectives have produced undesired results. So, what do we want people to do? Not to accomplish, not to generate, but to do. What is it that we can see them doing that we want them to do? Now, once we’ve got this clearly in our minds, we have another problem; and that is communicating it to them. Once it’s clear in our minds, how do we transfer it from our mind to their mind? This stuff is called communication, and it’s a very complicated thing to do.
At the very least, it involves two parts: a sender and a receiver, both of which have to be functional at the same time. We call it “turned on and tuned in,” and you can be one and not the other. You’re broadcasting on channel 2 and I’m listening to channel 11, and we’re not communicating out here. Or, you’ve challenged me a little bit in your communication, and I’m listening to get back at you, not to understand what you’re saying. There’s so many ways communication can fall flat. So, one of the best tools of communication is to make it a process and not an event. If you communicate often, one of the messages will get through.
You’ve mentioned to me several times the old saying that, “If you tell somebody something seven times, they’ll tell you they’ve heard it once.” And, quite frankly, that’s probably true. You may have said it seven times, but they’ve only heard it once. One only of those seven times were they truly turned on and tuned in. Now, these last two parts of this model are what I call the behavioral science parts of them because they are the management of consequences. And consequences are ultimately what shape behavior. So, you have to answer these questions, you have to answer them intelligently, and you have to answer them systematically.
The first question is: What happens if they do it? So you’ve decided something you want somebody to do, you’ve communicated it to them, and they do it. What happens? And all too often, we say, “Oh, desired result accomplished,” and walk away. No. There’s another part to this and that’s maintenance. It’s like saying, “I’ve turned the key in my car. It started. Job done.” No, starting the car isn’t the only goal out there. And, even if it is, how do we make sure that the car’s gonna start next time? So, we have to maintain this. Behaviors not only have to be shaped, they have to be maintained. And, very often, we do a very poor job of maintaining behavior.
Now, there’s a fourth part to this model, and that’s the other side of this question. What happens if they don’t do it? Well, one of the things that we tend to jump to is, if we’re going to reward them for doing it, we need to punish them for not doing it. Not necessarily. Punishment’s a two-edged sword. And, very often, we hurt ourselves while we’re trying to injure the other party out there. The blade’s sharp on both sides.
Shawn Galloway:
Plus, you find that if punishment is not viewed as fair and just and a consequence that everybody understands, we tend to find that actually negatively impacts the culture of innovation within a company.
Terry Mathis:
Even punishment done well has side effects. And, sometimes those side effects outweigh the value of the punishment. Another very, very misunderstood concept is that punishment is designed to stop things, not to start them. This whole performance management model is a starting model. So, punishment’s a really ad fit for that question, “What happens if they don’t do it?” And I’d like to suggest maybe a two-part answer to that. First of all, confirm that the communication has taken place. The fact that we’ve said it, we threw it out there one time, we threw the message up in the air, it wasn’t received, sometimes that’s the only problem. So, a lot of times, when someone’s not doing something, the first question is: Do you understand what you need to do?
Shawn Galloway:
Essentially, are you enabled?
Terry Mathis:
Right, are you enabled? Can you do it? Do you understand what needs to happen? And, very often, we detect the problem right there. The person says, “Well, I didn’t know I was supposed to do that.” And we tend to say, “Well, dummy, I told you that.” But, the communication didn’t take place.
Shawn Galloway:
And that’s something that we find often. As you know, many times the communication ends up being more or less the documentation that comes out of communication. The purpose of communication sometimes falls into the category: if they’re seeking receipt of communication, rather than ensuring transfer of knowledge.
Terry Mathis:
Oh, yeah, very much so. If you ask someone, “Do you understand that?” Of course, they’re going to say, “Yes,” because the question isn’t really, “Did you understand that?” The question is more like, “Are you stupid? Hey, dummy, did you understand that?” Well, sure you’re gonna say, “Yes.” It’s almost built into the communication. But just an acknowledgment of communication isn’t understanding, and, very often, people don’t do what we want them to do because they don’t understand it. They’re not enabled, as you mentioned earlier. There’s some reason for it. So, don’t assume that it’s instant insubordination. That’s only one of the reasons for poor performance, and it’s not one of the more common ones.
So, if someone’s not performing, seek to confirm understanding of the information that you send. Do you understand what you’re supposed to do and how you’re supposed to do this job? And ask that question in a non-threatening way and a helpful way, so that you can get an honest answer. Now, again, if the performance continues to not happen, you need to go down the list of reasons why the performance isn’t happening. Does the person understand? Are they enabled? And keep going down. Is there some barrier out there that keeps them from doing this? Or, do they have the time to do it? Do people understand the priority of this task in relation to other tasks?
Are they maxing out their day and not finding time to add this to the things that you already asked them to do? And, if so, do you need to help them with reprioritization? And, very often, these are the kinds of things that help to shape performance. When someone’s doing it, give them feedback. And let them know that they are doing it, that you’ve noticed, and that you’re pleased. When they’re not doing it, again, let them know that they’ve been observed not doing it. And then probe and say, “What would it take to make this happen?”
This is a results orientation, and much, much more effective results orientation than the instant carrot and stick kind of thing that a lot of managers have gotten stuck into the model of using.”
Until next time, remember: “In safety, prevention trumps reaction.” For more information on Safety Culture Excellence®, or if you have a topic to suggest, please email us at podcast @ proactsafety.com.