- Adaptive performance management
is built on a simple premise.
If you focus on each individual's
and each team's performance management,
then organizational performance management
takes care of itself for the most part.
Of course, that doesn't let
the organization's leaders completely off the hook.
Creating a culture of adaptive performance management
can be extremely difficult.
Many people are resistant to change,
and especially to rapid change.
So enabling processes that allow workers
and teams to continually adapt
takes a deep commitment to consistency and to communication.
So what does the organization's leadership
need to do to enable a culture
of adaptive performance management?
First, leaders are on the hook to continually articulate
the organization's adaptive strategy.
And to ensure that strategy is known
throughout the entire organization.
If a leader can stop literally any employee in the hallway,
and ask them to state the goals and deliverables
of the overall organization,
those leaders are doing their jobs.
And of course, they need to continually encourage
the kinds of practices that keep workers accountable
for their commitments.
Second, just as any line worker in an organization
has to do their own adaptive performance management plan,
so does every leader in the organization.
If top managers don't model behavior,
how can they possibly expect others to do it?
Leaders need to be just as accountable
for their goals and deliverables
as other workers in the organization.
So, if an employee stopped a leader in the hallway,
they should be just as empowered
to ask that leader what their working on
to contribute to the organization's goals.
And third, leaders need to think
of adaptive performance management as being recursive,
a cycle, like a river that flows in both directions.
Not only should the goals and deliverables
of the organization flow from the leadership,
but the leadership needs to be continually connected
to the goals and deliverables
flowing from individuals and teams.
Why? In a constantly changing world,
top down command and control processes
need to give way to fluid, bi-directional processes
that leverage the collective wisdom of every organization,
including its employees, its partners,
its customers and the communities in which it operates.
It's one of the leadership's core responsibilities.
They must manage that information flow,
and help everyone in the organization's ecosystem
to remain in sync.