The Five Necessary Features of Total Performance Management
For total performance to be managed properly the process must have four features. Each are described briefly next. The first, total accountability is the most important and the other four flows from it.
1. Total Accountability. A minimum level of accountability is absolutely necessary for any business, or any society for that matter, to function. Corporate greatness requires the maximum level, that of total accountability. It is the overriding principle for properly managing total performance.
For there to be total accountability both behavior and results must be managed diligently throughout each performance period or accountability cycle. It must apply to every corporate member, no double standards allowed (in hierarchies CEOs get away with the most and worst wrongdoing). Each cycle must start with great expectations about performance because they are the standard against which actual performance is to be compared. During the cycle performance and its situations must be monitored neither too much nor too little. At the close of the cycle performance must be validly appraised and where appropriate or necessary, responsively and responsibly rewarded or penalized (penalties, of course, must be imposed in a timely and just fashion independently from the cycle's schedule).
Because the immediate result of a decision or action may and is often intended to trigger a series of further actions by others, the question arises as to when the initial actor's accountability stops. "The buck stops here" was President Truman's famous declaration. In general the more influence a person has over a decision and/or subsequent action or chain of actions that lead to more distant consequences the more that person should be held accountable for them (a lowerarchy, of course, without a leader perched umpteen layers above most everyone else has a shorter chain of consequences linked to the original decision maker/actor).
In a model corporation of cross-functional teams, accountability for results is shared but accountability for behavior ordinarily is not. If a team, for example, fails to meet one or more team objectives, the whole team is accountable for the shortfall. But a team cannot behave. Behavior is an action of an individual. Individuals are accountable for their actions as individuals. However, in cases where any consequential behavior cannot be readily associated with any particular person, the whole team may need to be held accountable for the behavior (e.g., in the classical school room case where no one will tattle on the troublemaker).
2. Setting Great Expectations. With apologies to Charles Dickens, behind every great performance is likely to have been a great expectation. Great expectations, especially when self-owned so to speak motivate and guide people toward desired ends and not by using unacceptable means as would be the case with ignoble expectations (e.g., setting unreasonably high goals that knowingly can be met only unscrupulously). Setting great expectations is critical, because a poor start usually ends poorly.
Great expectations proscribe negative behavior and prescribe positive results (recall their definitions in the introductory article). Proscribing rather than prescribing behavior may seem an odd corollary principle, but it is not. It says be flexible about positive behavior and inflexible about negative (i.e., incompetent, unmotivated, and/or unethical) behavior. As for results, positive ones can often be met through a variety of positive means, each of which would be acceptable assuming there were no differences among them in terms of their cost and other considerations. Incompetent, unmotivated, and unethical means, on the other hand, should never be tolerated.
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