Improving Performance in Organisation

Improving Performance at the Organisational Level

Performance improvement is defined as measurement of the output of a particular business process and modifying the process to increase the output, efficiency or effectiveness of the process. Performance improvement is applicable to individual performers, teams and organisations.

Organisational performance is measured by its overall financial, sales and production performance. If the actual performance is better than the expected performance it means the organisation has made more profits than expected, which means, performed better than the standard defined. But if the actual performance is less than the expected/ targeted performance it means the organisation has gained lesser profits than expected.

An organisation needs to incur the cost for manufacturing or service, invest in people by hiring and training them, spend money on marketing the product or service, etc. The product or service needs to be sold at a certain value and volume to ensure the return on this investment.

An organisation may use various tools and techniques – real-time or software-based – to improve individual, team and organisation performance. In below section, let us find out how team and individual performance may be improved.

Improving Team Performance

Team is a unit of individual employees working together to achieve a common goal. To improve a team’s effectiveness, relationships among team members also matter. The manager may help his/her team improve its performance by following mentioned strategies –

• Define roles of individual team members clearly – Job Descriptions (JD) and Job Specifications (JS) help.
  
  Example: JD of a recruiter could be:
  
  
  • Able to understand the business and various business roles to screen the candidates 
  • Able to understand pay structure to offer salaries  
  • Able to use numbers and excel effectively to analyse hiring and attrition data
  • Etc.
    
    
    JS of the same recruiter could be:
    
    
  • Minimum qualification: MBA
  • Minimum work experience: 5 years
  • Functioning knowledge of excel and some hiring tools
  • Etc.
    
    
• Share vision and mission of the organisation and cascading the same to the team – give them a purpose to look at the larger objective
  
  
• Define SMART goals for individual team members that are linked to their individual roles
  
  
• Developing action plans (clearly defining who will do what and by when and what resources are required) for individual team members as well as for the whole team – use of dashboards, balance scorecards, etc. for the same is helpful
  
  
• Provide constructive feedback from time to time – Do not wait for the formal review process
  
  
• Encourage employees to learn new skills and take up different projects/assignments to improve different competencies
  
  
• Communicate constantly, be transparent – this helps build trust
  
  
• Avoid biases and assumptions – confirm your perceptions by asking clarifying questions
  
  
• Involve team members in decision making and problem solving
  
  
• Distribute the work appropriately – don’t over burden only few team members
  
  
• Celebrate successes – this helps motivate the team
  
  
• Above mentioned strategies, along with continuous employee connect and team building activities will help improve relations at work, overall work environment, morale of employees and therefore the team effectiveness.

Improving Individual Performance

A manager must ensure all above-mentioned strategies for a team are applied to an individual employee too. It is also the responsibility of the individual employee to work towards improving efficiency and effectiveness. Enhancing competencies and gaining new knowledge helps to improve work performance. It also makes one a better individual and creates opportunities for professional development.

Apart from organisational performance indicators, one may use following strategies to improve individual performance:

• Develop an action plan for set SMART goals
  
  
• Have your own stretched timelines to complete tasks
  
  
• Use technology to remind you and help you remain focused on goals
  
  
• Prioritise your work – categorise different tasks into urgent and important and focus your energies accordingly
  
  
• Manage your time effectively – learn to say no to time wasters, make a to-do list daily and check it daily
  
  
• Don’t procrastinate and don’t take silly mistakes casually
  
  
• Be realistic and avoid burnout – again, saying ‘no’ helps!
  
  
• Do your own SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity and threat) analysis – work towards converting weaknesses into strengths and threats into opportunities
  
  
• Periodically review your own work – find performance patterns, make a self-talk diary (write about all your behaviour during challenging situations – positive or negative), seek 360-degree feedback
  
  
• Collaborate with others whenever necessary
  
  
• Plan and prepare well for all your projects, meetings, communications – saves time by delaying tasks as well as avoiding mistakes Avoid distractions – keep phone on silent while working on important tasks relax your muscles
  
  
• Refresh and hydrate yourself well – take short breaks, take a walk,
  
  
• Have a hobby to rejuvenate yourself

Here are some examples related to above mentioned points:

• Example 1: You are a regional sales executive and annual goal is to increase sales by 1% over the last year. You may take a stretched target of increasing the sales by 1.5% over the last year.
  
  
• Example 2: You are a production engineer. As per your company norms, around 5% wastage is allowed during manufacturing. You may take a stretched target of reducing the wastage to 4%.
  
  
• Example 3: You know you tend to work better under pressure and therefore you tend to procrastinate important presentations and preparation for client meetings a night before the deadline. However, it has become your habit and you have started taking it casually. The result is missed deadlines and poor presentations for client.
  
  
  Next big client meeting is scheduled one month from today. You make a to-do list for this client meeting. Week 1 is data collection, week 2 is analysis, week 3 is creating the presentation, week 4 is practice and further modifications to the presentation as required. Now, even if you get the data a bit late, you will still have buffer time at hand!
  
  
• Example 4: You are not able to prioritise. You attend a training programme on time management and learn some techniques to prioritise your work. You make your own urgent-important quadrant (#) for all your goals and then develop an action plan accordingly. Now you are able to say no, avoid wasting time and also achieve results.

As per Maslow’s Motivation theory, if one strives for self-actualisation then one is sure to improve one’s performance.

Problems at Managerial Level

A manager is a person responsible for managing performance of a group of people. Manager needs to lead his/her team to achieve desired results/outcome. Manager must identify strong performance and encourage further improvement.

A manager must function as a leader too. Manager manages processes while a leader leads and develops people.

As part of the performance management system, manager must function at both levels – manager as well as leader.

He plays a key role as follows:

• Linking the goals to roles of team members
  
  
• Defining SMART goals for team members
  
  
• Reviewing team performance
  
  
• Giving constructive feedback
  
  
• Communicating with the team members – one-on-one and as a team
  
  
• Empowering team members to take decisions
  
  
• Investing time and finances in developing competencies of team members
  
  
• Motivating team members to perform better
  
  
• Leading by example

Not all personalities are the same and so are the personalities of the managers. Various functional and relationship competencies also impact the performance of any manager. Apart from his/her own strengths and weaknesses, the manager needs to manage the strengths and weaknesses of all the team members.

Challenges faced by the manager while managing performance are:

• Lack of well-defined roles and organisation structure
  
  
• Difficult team members (underperforming, undisciplined, absenteeism etc.)
  
  
• Internal politics (unethical/poor organisation culture)
  
  
• Lack of trust and respect amongst team members and towards the manager
  
  
• Lack of motivation (poor performance, poor teamwork, etc.)
  
  
• First time managers (promoted from peer to manager may lead to jealousy, lack of loyalty, etc.)
  
  
• Procrastination, lack of prioritisation by team members
  
  
• Poor quality of work (stretched deadlines, fire-fighting, etc.)
  
  
• Incompetent team members
  
  
• Less team members (understaffed)

At the same time, the problems at managerial level may be described as below:

• Difference of beliefs and values of the manager and that of team members
  
  
• Lack of communication (controlling or introvert manager, etc.)
  
  
• Lack of trust and respect towards team members
  
  
• Lack of role-goal clarity provided to team members
  
  
• Psychological/cognitive biases (explained below with examples)

Apart from above mentioned problems, there is a list of psychological/cognitive biases (a systematic error in thinking that impacts one’s choices and judgments) that may act as major problem during performance management:

• Halo effect: Tendency for an initial impression of a person to influence what we think of them overall
  
  
• Groupthink: Desire for cohesion in a group
  
  
• Choice supportive bias: Defending one’s choices and overlooking problems with those choices
  
  
• Confirmation bias: Tendency to listen more often to information that confirms our existing beliefs
  
  
• Hindsight bias: Tendency to see events, even random ones, as more predictable than they are (I knew it already/I had sense it, etc.)
  
  
• Anchoring bias: Tendency to be overly influenced by the first piece of information that we hear
  
  
• Misinformation effect: Tendency for memories to be heavily influenced by things that happened after the actual event itself
  
  
• Actor-observer bias: Tendency to attribute our actions to external influences and other people’s actions to internal ones. The way we perceive others and how we attribute their actions depends on a variety of variables, but it can be heavily influenced by whether we are the actor or the observer in a situation
  
  
• False consensus effect: Tendency people have to overestimate how much other people agree with their own beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and values
  
  
• Self-serving bias: Tendency for an initial impression of a person to influence what we think of them overall
  
  
• Availability heuristic: Tendency to estimate the probability of something happening based on how many examples readily come to mind
  
  
• Optimism bias: Tendency to overestimate the likelihood that good things will happen to us while underestimating the probability that negative events will impact our lives

With awareness, coaching and constant efforts to avoid the problems, a manager can lead his/her team towards high performance.

Performance Improvement Plan

A multinational automobile parts manufacturer from India wanted to assess its global competition. The company wanted to expand its manufacturing and research facilities outside of India and wanted to understand the laws of land also the market demand. They wanted the world class manufacturing facility at as low cost as possible.

The company hired a consultant for this market analysis. Along with a team of engineers from the company, the consultants travelled to few locations to check the sites and markets.

Consultant also conducted a detailed analysis of organisation’s financial data and key performance indicators. The analysis indicated that the overall sales are not increasing as much as the organisation had planned. The consultant recommended a ‘performance improvement plan’ for the organisation. Because before expanding, the organisation must first have a sound balance sheet!

The performance improvement plan included following recommendation;

Change the marketing strategy and improve branding Define stretched goals and develop a strategy to achieve those Communicate the new goals along with action plan to teams ‰‰ Increase productivity and reduce costs by maintaining stock, reducing defects and reducing absenteeism

The improvement plan suggested process changes for production and marketing. It also suggested working on employee morale and efficiency. After steady implementation of the plan, the organisation achieved stability that is needed before any expansion. The same consultant is now hired again to analyse new markets for the organisation!