Performance management: Have you got it right? | Issue #257
Five Performance Management Strategies That Actually Work
Twelve months has rattled past. It’s annual appraisal season. You’re racking your brains to remember what happened last year. You trawl through your diary and emails, searching for anything that will justify an A-Player rating. Meanwhile, your manager does the same. Neither of you can come up with anything meaningful. It’s going to be yet another exercise in box ticking. Then, your appraisal is shelved and forgotten about for another year.
Sound familiar? I often wonder why annual appraisals became the most popular performance management strategy. It’s always puzzled me. I’ve yet to find evidence that they work to improve performance, which I am told is the aim.
Effective performance management is about so much more than this. It should be future-looking and focused on ensuring team members are happy, engaged and working towards company goals. Not a retrospective conversation that’s bogged down in what you did seven months ago. Who can remember the details of that?
So, if annual appraisals don’t work, what are the more successful performance management approaches that do?
E263 | The Cultural Phenomenon: How To Influence Human Behaviour Through Culture with Marcus Collins
If you’re feeling frustrated and overwhelmed by your inability to effectively influence behaviour, despite your best efforts, then you are not alone! You may be tirelessly implementing marketing strategies, leadership tactics, or political campaigns, only to witness minimal impact on the desired outcomes. Instead of influencing behaviour, you find yourself facing resistance, indifference, or even backlash from the very individuals you are trying to engage.
Drawing from his experience in the advertising world and his academic background, Marcus Collins stands as a beacon in understanding and influencing human behaviour through culture. He’s put his theories to practice crafting successful campaigns for mammoths like Google and Nike, earning him widespread recognition including a spot on Advertising Age’s 40 under 40. His insightful book, For the Culture, accentuates his understanding of culture’s profound influence on behaviour. Nowadays, Marcus continues to influence minds as a professor at the esteemed Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.
In this episode, Marcus talks about how to get people to do things that they didn’t necessarily think they wanted to do, whether that’s buying an iPod or supporting the Brooklyn Nets. Because this is about moving people. How all of those tools and the knowledge that has been garnered by the advertising industry can be applied in churches or organisations to get people to move? Also, as leaders, what can we do to build a culture? What are the elements that define it? What makes people behave the same way as another person? How do you make things attractive to people so that they want to move?
Download and listen to learn more.
Recommended Podcasts
How To Fail With Elizabeth Day
A podcast that celebrates the things that haven’t gone right. Every week, a new interviewee explores what their failures taught them about how to succeed better.
Recommended Articles
Capturing the value of ‘one firm’
This McKinsey research shows unequivocally that it pays to be a one-firm firm. They conducted an extensive analysis of their proprietary Organizational Health Index (OHI) data, which gives an X-ray into how firms are run at a granular level.
Tech workers love their jobs. They’re also leaving
“No leader likes turnover. But understanding why some employees leave—and strategically planning for those departures—can help tech companies build a workforce that’s equipped to compete.”
Diagnosing a Broken Culture — and What to Do About It
“Developing a sound strategy to revitalize an organization’s culture requires more than an off-site leadership retreat. Leaders must clearly define what culture means and identify its fundamental components, and then create a compelling vision of what the aspirational culture will offer to employees.”
For The Culture by Marcus Collins
We all try to influence others in our daily lives. Whether you are a manager motivating your team, an employee making a big presentation, an activist staging a protest, or an artist promoting your music, you are in the business of getting people to take action. In For the Culture, Marcus Collins argues true cultural engagement is the most powerful vehicle for influencing behavior. If you want to get people to move, you must first understand the underlying cultural forces that make them tick. Collins uses stories from his own work as an award-winning marketer–from spearheading digital strategy for Beyoncé, to working on Apple and Nike collaborations, to the successful launch of the Brooklyn Nets NBA team–to break down the ways in which culture influences behavior and how readers can do the same. With a deep perspective, and built on a century’s worth of data, For the Culture gives readers the tools they need to inspire collective change by leveraging the cheat codes used by some of the biggest brands in the world. This is the only book you’ll need if you want to influence people to take action.
Quote of the week
“If you get the culture right, most of the other stuff will just take care of itself.”
Tony Hsieh
Dominic Monkhouse
Dominic offers business coaching and management development, strategy planning and organisational change, using tried and tested methods to launch your organisation onto an unparalleled growth trajectory. His programme is a function of his broad experience, his deep expertise and a proven process used by over 2,700 firms worldwide.