Management By Objectives (MBO) was popular not long ago, and has been updated to include a different perspective. It’s not about managing people anymore. It’s about managing the agreements for “performance” in a network designed to achieve a goal. Find out more about “performance” right here.
Step Two in “Managing for Accomplishment” is Managing for Production: setting up the structures and agreements that establish (a) success metrics, (b) a workable performance network (you’ll learn what that is if you don’t already know) and (c) agreements for coordination and communication in that network. Without this, production is delayed due to missteps – the reason so many projects exceed their timelines.
Good management practices are a path to better organization performance. One important practice is getting feedback on the success of a team’s products, services and communications to others inside the organization and outside it too. Feedback is a valuable performance resource: how else will we know if our groups are performing well?
Managers are expected to have other people “produce results” as well as to “develop” them and their performance. Here’s an easy way to get both at once.
What makes a good worker? Here is a collection of criteria from seven different types of organization, where Supervisors – not Managers – defined four levels of employees.
Specifying “by when” you’ll get back to someone is an easy way to give people confidence in you. You may have to check your calendar to do that, but it’s a small task that benefits you as well as the people around you.
Private conversations are useful in the workplace for some things, like hiring or re-positioning someone. But performance conversations – agreements for what people will deliver – are best done by the group. It builds teams, increases integrity, and improves “delivery performance”.
Don’t just assume your Boss(es) want one kind of work from you. Three kinds of performance – Doing, Done, and Delivered – deserve to be clarified.
Management. What do you manage? What is “performance”? How do you improve it? You already know the answers – you do it all the time.
People mostly do what you ask. So think about what you really want before you make a request.
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