Given the state of the global economy, it is little wonder executives around the world are asking their leadership teams to make more headway in terms of improving their workplace performance given its impact on organisational competitiveness and therefore their profitability. This month, I will endeavour to answer the question, albeit in an incomplete ‘commercial’ sense, ‘what can managers do to improve the performance of their people?’
Despite the topical nature of the question, the answers many come up with offer little insight over and above what most are already doing meaning the interventions we see being deployed often fall short of expectations. Irrespective of our success, or lack of it, what executives want is for their managers to be asking themselves the question ‘what more can I do to enable my team to deliver better outcomes for our business?’
Improving performance, at least up to a certain point, is not only logical it is relatively easy to achieve i.e. addressing the low hanging fruit such as prioritising staff efforts and activities, equipping people with the technical skills to meet their obligations, implementing the right systems and processes to enable efficient and consistent delivery and instilling a suitable operating platform to maximise productivity are, as mentioned, relatively straight forward exercises even though they take time and energy to complete. However once in place, what can managers do to create a more leverage-able point of difference in terms of their people to gain greater competitive advantage?
In my opinion, most people operating in a leadership sense seem to believe that once these things are done, their job is more or less complete rather than thinking once these things have been addressed, the role of leadership begins. In other words, once the operational platforms are in place, managers will be in a better position to explore a deeper understanding of ‘human’ performance rather than assuming the performance of their workforce is simply a consequence of the technology and frameworks they utilise.
The fact of the matter is, if managers were to examine the outputs of their people they are likely to discover that irrespective of the tools they offer, individual performance will differ – simply because some will have the capacity to operate at a higher level than that achieved by the majority.
The point I am suggesting is that true ‘high’ performing businesses are high performers because of ‘who’ they employ and the ‘way’ those people operate meaning a business shouldn’t consider itself a high performer simply because it stacks up against international benchmarks in terms of operational efficiency. The reason I feel strongly about this is because many organisations fall into the trap of ranking their performance against others rather than comparing their current outputs against what is potentially possible. As an example, company x may be producing x number of widgets per hour, which may be internationally competitive, for no other reason than they are using the latest technology. If however, they want to capitalise on their opportunities and thus garner a more notable advantage, they need to figure out how to perform beyond best practice otherwise their point of difference will be negated when their competitors make similar (technological) investments.
The more we examine the essence of success, the more we recognise it comes down to people and whether those at the helm have the understanding and frameworks to increase their team’s psychological capacity to perform. If a company wants to operate at an optimum level its managers need to think about how they will equip their people with the tools to excel, not just provide them with the technology and subsequent skill-sets to do their job as well as their compatriots. If managers recognise their people are their only sustainable point of difference (and therefore their primary competitive advantage), they will be more inclined to invest in their development rather than lurching from one bad spot to one slightly better in an attempt to keep up with the competition.
The new-ish age adage ‘work smarter not harder’ - which is possibly top of mind for many – may capture the spirit of performance but because of the way it is interpreted, it seldom leads to game-changing improvements. The fact is, most people assume this premise infers a more conscious and deliberate ‘prioritising of tasks’ rather than the idea of ‘creating a true high-performance mind-set’ in order to improve our attitudes and behaviours and thus the outcomes we deliver.
If we were to think about it this way, we would not only focus our attention on the things that really matter, we would enable our people to add the value they could in the areas they are responsible for to honour their stated purpose; which of course requires managers to ensure their people are clear about what the organisation is trying to achieve to allow them to identify how they need to operate to meet their KPI’s.
The next step for managers in terms of enabling their staff to experience a step change in their performance is to teach them how to think in order to access their true potential. By this I mean how they need to think to create an appropriate mind-set that is conducive to, and thus aligned with, the outcomes the company is after. Incidentally, an appropriate mind-set is a state of mind that enables the said individual to think in a way that is consistent with the company’s strategic vision. If an individual’s mind-set and subsequent thinking was not conducive to the outcomes they were after, it wouldn’t matter how positive or focused they were, they wouldn’t be in a position to deliver.
The reason it is important to recognise the difference between an ‘appropriate’ mind-set and one that is focused is that we will never achieve the desired outcome without one despite our potential or commitment. The only way an individual can therefore achieve the results they are after is if they create the right state of mind to achieve it. That means the vision they have of themselves must be congruent with the outcome they are focused on, rather than focusing on the task at hand in the hope they get the result. For this reason, it is imperative managers are in a position to engage their people deeply enough to assess the appropriateness of their state and therefore help them get it right, not imagine that with more time and experience it is something they will automatically master. The point is, if the vision an individual has of themselves is incompatible with the company’s aspirations, it doesn’t matter how hard they try, or indeed how smart they work, they will continue to miss the mark.
In other words, if people are not in the right state of mind to excel, it doesn’t matter how focused they are, or where they invest their time, they are going to come up short.
In practical terms, and in order to answer the original question, I believe managers need to understand how to gain a leverage-able mandate to influence their people’s mind-set and therefore their performance and contribution; not assume the challenge will be addressed by equipping them with the technical skill-sets to manage their basic function.
To this end, it is important managers take the time to work on their leadership and effectiveness if they want to add the value their employer should expect of them given the seat they occupy. Of course one of the best ways they can achieve this is to monitor their employee’s engagement. The problem for most however is they tend to believe these things are measures of staff happiness and engagement with the ‘company’ rather than indicators of ‘their’ performance and relationship with their people i.e. until managers accept such measures are insights about them, and take the feedback on board, they are unlikely to change their behaviour nor improve their relevance and ability to influence.
Summary
In summary, to build a true high-performing workforce, I believe managers need to understand they are responsible for the state of their workforce and therefore see their performance and productivity as their number one priority. Until managers get serious about this, they will be unable to leverage the potential of their people and as a consequence prove immaterial in terms of helping their company gain traction.
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