The Performance Challenge

The performance challenge is to develop management systems that make employees the organization's greatest asset. The answer is a performance aligning process to transform everyday employees into high performers thru a 7-step methodology according to the authors of this self-defined organizational effectiveness book. The first two steps are the duty of the organization, while the last five are a joint manager/employee responsibility. Together these steps avoid a piecemeal approach to meeting the corporate performance challenge. The seven separate but interrelated steps, each covered in a separate chapter's discussion, are as follows: Step 1: Conducting Stakeholder Valuation Step 2: Improving Job Design Step 3: Establishing Synergistic Relationships Step 4: Applying Performance Coaching Step 5: Conducting Developmental Evaluations Step 6: Creating Performance Growth and Development Plans Step 7: Linking compensation and Rewards to Performance Growth and Development But, the authors then tell us that regardless of the use of these or any other performance improvement steps, organizations are doomed without effective leadership. So in Chapter 9 effective leadership is described as someone skilled at; critical reflection, strategic thinking, interpersonal interactions, and performance-enhancement. However, if employee transformation and effective leadership are not enough to meet more complex performance challenges, then it may be necessary to transform from work groups to virtual teams to generate collaborative solutions. The need and process for this strategy is discussed in Chapter 10. As you can see, meeting the performance challenge is not as simple as it started out to be, and in the end, the book moves beyond even these three strategies to consider the next evolutionary step in organizational philosophy, what the authors call a "developmental organization". Today, even the strategies described in the book for the "developmental organization" are being seen as `not enough' to meet the performance challenge, and progressive organizations are looking at relational management concepts to mesh the individual's need for purpose, identity, and accountability with the organizations performance vision. This meshing of individual and business needs holds the possibility to truly make people an organization's greatest asset. Dennis DeWilde, author of "The Performance Connection"

The performance coaching model is meaty, yet presented in a very accessible manner. Many companies don't take the job of performance measurement, standards, and feedback seriously enough, which hampers performance. Gilley offers practical tips on making the performance appraisal process more effective. Well worth the time.