Sight, Insight and Foresight method for managing non-performance

This post was triggered by an interaction on Twitter that I have had with a senior HR professional on 'addressing non-performance'. We agreed that the focus should be on 'getting rid of non-performance in non-performers' as opposed to 'getting rid of non-performers'. Then, he asked me how exactly would I accomplish this. This put me in a fix; how will I say something worthwhile in 140 characters in response to such a fundamental question considering that our senior HR professional would have read (and even created) tons of material on performance management? That is when I came up with this 'Sight, Insight and Foresight method for managing non-performance'.

Though I was only 'semi-serious' when I came up with the above 'method', later I felt that it might not be such a bad idea to detail it out a bit. To be honest, there is nothing particularly new in this - it is 'old wine in new bottles'. It is also more of a 'perspective' than a 'method'. However, I feel that as the product (basic principles of performance management) is good & the need it addresses is real (still relevant), the requirement is just to ensure that remains attractive (appealing) to the customers by means of new packaging (positioning)! Also, I am convinced that when it comes to the basics of life and work, our problem is more to do with 'inaction' and not 'ignorance'! Hence, if new packaging can increase the probability of a good concept getting the attention it deserves, it is definitely worth the effort. So, here we go!

What do the various elements of the 'Sight, Insight and Foresight method for managing non-performance' mean?

'Sight' is about developing a shared understanding among the stakeholders (especially between the employee and the manager) regarding what exactly are the performance objectives, how will success be measured and how well one is doing against those objectives & targets at any point of time. This is not trivial, as there can be a disconnect between the manager and the employee on 'On what good looks like'  especially in the case of non-routine and rapidly evolving jobs. While SMART (Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Relevant, Time bound) objectives can help to some extent (especially if they can be made to remain SMART over the entire performance period - no easy task, I must say!), there are deep psychological factors that might lead to a situation where the employee disagrees with with the organization's/manager's assessment of his/her performance ( See Performance ratings and the 'above average effect' for details). 

'Insight' is about generating understanding through performance coaching about the factors that lead to non-performance and how to address  them. While this would involve providing developmental inputs/opportunities where required, we must ensure that the root causes of non-performance are correctly identified. Often, problems at the structure, process, policy, work planning & leadership levels get wrongly (and conveniently!) interpreted as 'non-performance' at individual employee level and hence get diagnosed as  'individual capability issues' (see 'Training the victim' for more details). By the way, if the diagnosis leads to the conclusion that the root cause of non-performance is 'lack of organizational commitment' on the part of the employee, we must check if we are using 'Appropriate metaphors for organization commitment'! Hence, the 'insight' we are talking about here is for both the employee and the organization!!

'Foresight' is about predicting possible impediments to good performance and dealing with them proactively. These impediments usually become apparent in hindsight*; but, by then, the performance window would have closed and the employee would have already been labeled as a 'non-performer'! It is also about identifying and addressing non-performance early enough - before it becomes a full-blown issue. If the performance standards are very high and 'non-performance' means 'anything other than outstanding performance', then deeper aspects related to person-job fit, employee engagement (See Employee engagement and the story of the Sky Maiden) , culture (See Of reasons, rationalizations & collective delusions) & meaning (See Architects of meaning) also need to be considered!

*Note: It is interesting to note that foresight and hindsight are represented by Prometheus and his brother Epimetheus in Greek mythology. Prometheus means 'he who thinks before' and Epimetheus means 'he who thinks after'. 

Any comments/ideas?

The curious case of missing 'solution orientation'

One of the most frequent complaints that I have heard about the employees in BPO/Shared Service Centres is that they lack 'solution orientation'. While this complaint gets expressed in many other forms also, the essential issue is something like this: When there is a customer request, the employee does come up with a response within the time stipulated in the service level agreement (SLA). However, the response does not really help the customer/ does not solve the customer's problem adequately.

Often this is considered as an 'attitude issue' (e.g. lack of customer orientation/ unwillingness to go the extra mile etc.) and there is an attempt to address this by attitude training and/or pep talk. But this might not work as there are often deeper issues at the awareness, ability and structural levels.

In high growth - high attrition environments often employees are put on the job after basic training. While this enables them to take care of most of the standard scenarios, they have limited ability to respond in those cases where the customers requirement is (slightly)different from the standard/text-book scenarios. Also the employees have limited understanding of the customer's context and the desired outcome for the customer(beyond the immediate output requested). In addition to this there could be issues with the work-load and the way in which performance is measured. For example, if the employees are already overloaded it might be very difficult/impossible to 'go the extra mile' in most cases. Again the performance management system should have measures that recognize and reward going the extra mile.

Thus building solution orientation needs to go beyond attitude training. Based on the above discussion, we can say that some of the following ideas might worth looking at (depending on the context) in order to improve solution orientation.

(a) Help the employees to gain a better understanding of the customer expectations & the customer’s ‘frame of reference’/where they are coming from. Provide better ‘big picture’ understanding/build knowledge of the larger process and the impact of their work on the larger process( where only a part of the process is outsourced).
(b) Improve the capability and confidence level of employees. Encourage/enable the employees to build expertise in their area of work.
(c) Teach ‘general principles’ in addition to teaching the processing rules.
(d) Encourage people to think and not just do . Be less authoritative. Encourage people to take decisions and take responsibility for those decisions. Provide support/ ‘safety net’ so long as ‘reasonable care’ has been exercised.
(e) Provide manager support/encouragement & act as role models
(f) Enable employees to have a sense of achievement and create pride in being able to help the customer.
(g) Provide the room/space to ‘go the extra mile’(don’t overload the employees to an extent where it is impossible to stretch)

In addition to all this, it is very important to ensure that the employees themselves experience good responsiveness/solution orientation from the support services in the organization (like HR/Finance/IT/Admin. etc.). This also gives a strong message to the employees that responsiveness/solution orientation is a way of life in the organization.