Measuring Performance Doesn‘t Help, Measuring How You Perform Does
Measuring Performance Doesn‘t Help, Measuring How You Perform Does!
It is not what you do that matters, but how you do it that does!
by Andrew Cooke, Growth & Profit Solutions
Significant effort, time and resources are spent by companies in assessing the 
current level of performance in order to be able to determine what we need to do to perform at the right level. This focuses on the result. This is backward thinking. This is like managing for profit by measuring your profit. Profit cannot be improved by managing profit, rather but by improving your revenues and costs. So it is with performance.
To improve performance you need to understand what the three drivers of performance. Once we do so we can then start to analyse what we need to do to sustain or improve our performance
Andrew’s 3 Drivers of Performance
- Right People
- Right Tools
- Access to the Development of the Skills (Aptitudes) and Behaviours (Attitudes) Needed
Right People
You want people who want to work for you, who are able to use their talents in the right role and find gratification and recognition in their work. Their values and approach match those of your business.
Right Tools
People need to have the necessary tools to enable them to do their work and to support them in doing so. For example, an architect needs to have the right software to design and develop buildings, the necessary space
Access to the Development of the Rights Skills & Behaviours
These are probably the most important drivers. You may have the right people and the right tools, but it is the skills they bring to bear in doing the work, and their attitude they have to how they do their work, that will differentiate how they individually and collectively perform.
- Skills – people have the necessary skills to do the work, or ability to learn the skills they need to be a high-performer. This is the what of the work done.
- Behaviours – this is the how of the work done.
You want people who have high-performing behaviours, that is the way they do their work creates synergies, opportunities and virtuous cycles – for example, they hold themselves accountable for their work, and look to remedy their own mistakes without being told and share lessons learnt with others.. You also want to ensure you don’t have people whose behaviours are those of low-performers (for example, they always find fault in others but never themselves, they are unable or unwilling to learn and develop (especially from their mistakes), they put their self-interests above those of the team etcetera).
Here you need to be able to provide access to the means by which people can develop the right skills for their job as their role and business conditions change, and to have the rights systems in place for recruiting, managing and developing the right behaviours – the high-performing behaviours which drive higher performance.
Next Steps
So stop measuring your performance in terms of what you have done – this is an end-result. Rather, start measuring how you perform – look at how you have performed (or failed to) in terms of each of these three factors, and how you can improve each factor both individually and in their interaction with each other. Only by focusing on how you perform can you improve your performance.’
Look at your performance in terms of each of these three factors in term. In doing so look at where you are performing now, and determine where you need to perform, and identify several strategies to help you bridge the gap. Look at how each factor interacts with the others, assess the gap in performance, and again identify several ways to bridge the gap. Once you have done this then identify the top three actions from the list you have created which, if you address first, will have the greatest impact on improving your performance.
Good luck and share your experiences here!
Click here to find out more about Andrew Cooke and Growth & Profit Solutions.
