|
Performance review sessions are the sessions at the team, process, and function and enterprise level. These review sessions are held including the key players of the team along with the head of the team. Scorecards and Dashboards are two different subjects, though both are related to performance. Given their difference, the review sessions also have different objectives, process and facilitation rules.
Few principles are common across any-type of performance review session:
Has to have a single performance report reference point
There are two parts to the above statement- Reference point and Single.
The REFERENCE POINT is essentially a scorecard or a dashboard. Without a performance report, one cannot have a discussion.
TIP- We have heard many people saying that it is easier and less time-consuming to just go into the room, share the progress verbally or using ad-hoc documents. Creating a dashboard for a daily or weekly review, takes away too much time. We recommend that it helps the productivity of people, if you deploy a central resource in the team for generating scorecards or dashboards. Let the people feed data to that role (or that role can get it from the production systems or BI environment). Once your dashboard generation process becomes efficient and mostly automated, people should be able to produce it by themselves.
TIP- One will need to be a tough manager to drive the discipline of daily or weekly dash-boarding. A dashboard process once institutionalized becomes fairly easy to execute. The effectiveness benefit will out-weigh the initial resistance or unpopularity one has to live with as a manager.
By SINGLE, we mean that there should be one single document (dashboard or scorecard) which should be referred to during the performance review. If you have individual dashboards circulating in a meeting, you have following risks:
- Conflicting data.
- People more interested in sharing their document, than looking at others
- All discussion points, decision points, issues etc. become scattered.
In an inadequate performance review session, each participant will have his own scorecard or dashboard, which his team has prepared. As the person presents the performance report to his peers and the manager, the discussions and actions are recorded. At the end of the meeting, one has five (dashboards) with five different sets of recorded actions and issues. Even if you are recording actions and minutes at a single place, the linkage of these minutes will be scattered across multiple documents.
Instead of the above, one needs to consolidate the dashboard (or a scorecard), and present it as a single document. Each member of the team can have his own piece in the dashboard, which can be referred to. This helps to have a better management.
Sometimes, the participants in a performance review session have very distinct domains, which have least linkage with each other. For example, marketing and order fulfillment function. You can have their individual pieces placed to-gather within a scorecard (when you are doing a enterprise level review), without building any cross-connections. However, it is important that for a team level scorecard or dashboard, there is a single document.
TIP- The question sometime asked is that who will do the consolidation of individual dashboard or scorecard. In real-life, the team members give finishing touches to their pieces, till the last minute before the performance review meetings. They don't have the time to work with their peers to have a consolidated performance report. The simple answer to this issue is the discipline and dedicated performance report manager, who will do the consolidation for you.
TIP- The performance report manager (this role can have different names) is a person who provides support in preparation and consolidation of dashboards or scorecards across the team. This role is called different names like MIS manager, information manager and so on. This role may not be a dedicated role. Secondly, this role has to be well- empowered to drive the discipline and fact-based reporting.
Has to have the reference to the outcomes of the last session
Irrespective of when it is going to be used with in a session, one needs to maintain anchor around the minutes and discussions in the prior performance review meetings. Minutes have to be classified within the following categories, to make them actionable and track-able. The outcomes are:
- Key Performance Points, which need to be on the radar.
- Key actions
- Key assumptions
- Key decision points
Please refer outcomes of a performance review sessions for details
Focused
The performance review session needs to stay focused on the objectives of performance review. One needs to ensure that unrelated items, any crises, major event etc does not hijack the meeting.
For example, let us say that a system downtime for 2 hours happened in the morning. As the review session starts, the meeting gets distracted to discuss this immediate crisis, instead of focusing on the scorecard. One need not totally avoid any immediate crises, but it need not hijack the meeting itself. A manager has to take particular care to follow the rules. Sometimes, a manager has top of the mind items which he or she wants to discuss or share. For example let us say that manager has just got a tip that a new competitor is planning to enter the market. In daily dashboard review, he can agree to take an offline meeting to discuss this issue, instead of making it a key discussion item. Immediate performance related to daily dashboard will not be impacted by future competition.
Time-bound
One needs to build a time pressure for the review sessions for them to have greater effectiveness and better preparation. There needs to be fine balance between the time spent and thoroughness of discussion.
TIP- as you work on improving your performance review sessions and the quality of the performance reports (dashboards or scorecards); you should budget a longer time in the beginning and gradually reduce the time to the right levels. For example- A daily dashboard review in an ideal world may need 15 minutes (say). You may give 30 minutes in the beginning and trim it down to lower levels over time.
Well-Facilitated
The performance review sessions have maximum traps of becoming de-focused or extended. A good facilitation is always helpful. |
