My first article on revitalizing your performance management solution discussed the merits of conducting an organizational assessment to better understand why your current performance management solution is not working to its full potential.  After going through “why” an assessment is crucial, we are going to discuss “how” to use those results to develop a revitalization plan.
To keep this simple, I use the results of an organizational assessment of a hypothetical company (Figure 1) to illustrate the “how”. 

There are a few interesting things in the above example. Despite the fact that people within the organization trust the information produced by the the Corporate Perfromance Management (CPM) system, they use the information mainly to produce mandatory reports (79%) instead of focusing on strategizing (14%) and meeting the business needs (14%) of the organization. As you can see, conducting this type of assessment enables you to dig down deep to find out what the underlying issues are and, most importantly, identify opportunities for  organizational success. 
Now that we have a better understanding of what some of the issues are that prevent an organization from taking full advantage of its performance management solution. The next step is to understand some of the potential reasons why this might be the case. To do this, in conjunction with the results from the organizational assessment, I normally try to answer the following question:

1. Does the organization have clearly defined and articulated mission, vision, strategies and goals that are regularly measured, monitored and communicated?
2. Are there targets in place to measure against organizational results?
3. Is there a single person accountable for achieving individual organizational results?  Do the individuals, who are accountable for achieving these results, have the resources and the authority to ensure that these results are achieved?
4. Do employees at all levels of the organization understand how they contribute to the organization’s goals?
5. Are there incentives in place to ensure performance management information is used to make decisions within the organization
6. Are there processes in place to identify opportunities for improvement, to develop and to implement solutions?  Do employees take part in this process?
7. Are learning/training plans linked to performance improvement?

There are many other potential questions; however, these ones provide me with a good understanding of why performance management is not being fully utilized within the organization.  Question 1-3 address any fundamental organizational issues that need to be addressed while questions 4-7 deal with certain processes and practices that may not exist within the organization that hinder it from attaining the full benefit from its performance management solution.
This approach, i.e. by conducting and analyzing assessments and by asking pertinent questions, allows me to identify the appropriate action plan that will deliver quick wins and consistent benefits, and will win the hearts of employees throughout the organization.
In the next article, we will discuss how to devise a winning project plan and start to implement an effective solution.

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