Performance Management For Dummies®
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2019939296
ISBN 978-1-119-55765-4 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-55766-1 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-55771-5 (ebk)
Performance management is a continuous process of identifying, measuring, and developing the performance of individuals and teams and aligning their performance with the strategic goals of the organization. So performance management is a key tool to transform people’s talent and motivation into a strategic business advantage.
But because you are reading this book, you already know that performance management is broken. You hate wasting time dealing with “HR cops” who ask you to fill out useless performance evaluation forms. And you surely hate those dreaded soul-crushing annual performance review meetings. I don’t need to tell you, because you already know, that performance management is not even close to living up to its promise of turning human capital into a source of competitive advantage.
Though you may see media headlines proclaiming “Performance Evaluation is Dead” and “The End of Performance Reviews,” performance management is not going away. On the contrary, many companies such as GE, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo!, Adobe, and Accenture are transitioning from performance appraisal (once-a-year evaluation and review) to performance management (ongoing evaluation and developmental feedback). In other words, performance management is becoming a normal, routine, built-in, and ever-present aspect of work in 21st-century organizations, particularly considering demographic trends about Gen X and Gen Y employees who are digital natives, demand ongoing feedback, and thrive when given growth opportunities.
So if you want to be a successful manager, you need to be a successful performance management leader, which means you need to have the knowledge and skills to manage the performance of your employees. And this is exactly what this book will teach you how to do.
Performance Management For Dummies is a definitive guide on how to design and implement a successful performance management systems. You’ll learn how to maximize the benefits of performance management and minimize its pitfalls.
Performance Management For Dummies teaches you how to make performance management work for you by connecting individual and team performance with your organization’s strategic goals and priorities. This book also teaches you the nuts and bolts of how to define and measure performance in terms of what employees do (behaviors) and the outcome of what they do (results) — both for individual employees as well as teams. And this book also teaches you how to use performance management not just as an evaluation tool but, just as importantly, to help your employees grow and improve on an ongoing basis.
The book also covers how to gather and use data to understand whether the performance management system is working and where fixes may be needed. Overall, the book teaches you how to design and implement a state-of-the-science performance management system.
And if you don’t manage employees yet, you can give a copy of this book to your managers because what they learn in this book will help them manage your performance and make your own job a lot more satisfying and rewarding.
The information contained in this book is deliberately accessible and covers everything you need to know about performance management from the basics to the more sophisticated insights that will improve and fine-tune your existing performance management system. As a result, this book is essential reading whether you are new to business, in your first management or HR job, or a seasoned professional seeking some additional nuggets of wisdom to help squeeze just a little more value out of performance management. If you are already familiar with performance management, this book shines some light on the common problems or mistakes people make, so you can rectify any errors that may be impairing your results. Reinventing the wheel is time consuming and costly. Instead, it’s better to learn from both the evidence and research accumulated over decades as well as other people’s mistakes to make your performance management system work right now. You want to performance management to be a useful and insightful business tool rather than a once-a-year, soul-crushing, and time-wasting exercise.
Consider this book your performance management guide and come back to it often. Try out the ideas and suit your situation in your business. Make it your own and allow performance management to inform your talent-related decisions and support your strategy.
For this book, I’ve assumed that you are a participant in performance management in any capacity. This means your performance is evaluated, you evaluate someone else’s performance, or you are a member of the HR or related talent management function. Also, I’ve assumed that your participation in performance management is in the context of a business, government department, or not-for-profit organization seeking to better understand and use performance management.
All For Dummies books use distinctive icons to draw attention to specific features within a chapter. The icons help you quickly and easily find particular types of information that may be of use to you:
This icon highlights a practical tip to help you with designing or implementing a performance management practice.
When you see this icon, I’m highlighting a valuable point that you’ll want to remember. It saves you from underlining or using a highlighter pen as you read, but feel free to highlight key points as you go through the book.
Nothing makes a point better than a real-life example, so I include illustrations of how many organizations do things in practice. I’m not doing this to impress you but to impress upon you the ideas that I’m trying to get across.
Every once in a while, you may want to do one thing when it would actually be better to do the opposite (or to do nothing at all). I call attention to these situations with the Warning icon.
This icon contains an activity, question, exercise, or self-assessment that will help you learn by doing. It will help you make the material more personal and applicable to your organization and specific situation.
In addition to the material in this print or e-book you’re reading right now, this product also comes with some access-anywhere goodies on the web. Check out the free Cheat Sheet at www.dummies.com for some helpful checklists. Just go to the site and type “Performance Management For Dummies cheat sheet” in the Search box.
Also, check out my personal website, where you will find many relevant articles and resources about performance management and talent management in general: www.hermanaguinis.com.
That’s entirely up to you. You can read this book in order from Chapter 1 to 21, but you don’t have to. Where you start reading depends on how familiar and comfortable you are with performance management already.
In you are new to performance management or are interested in or charged with designing or improving an existing performance management system, then start at the beginning. Otherwise, use the table of contents to find what you are most interested in and jump straight to that section. Whatever reading approach you take, you will find a treasure trove of useful information and evidence-based advice that will allow you to unlock the true potential of performance management to transform people’s talent and motivation into a strategic business advantage and make work a more satisfying and rewarding experience.
Part 1
IN THIS PART …
Discover why you need an effective performance management system.
Understand the purpose and benefits of performance management.
Define and measure employee performance.
Avoid the problems caused by flawed systems.