Managing for Performance

Managing for Performance

How to Get the Best Out of Yourself and Your Team

by Alasdair White

First published in 1995 as a hardback and in 1996 as a paperback by

Judy Piatkus (Publishers) Ltd of

5 Windmill Street, London W1P 1HF

United Kingdom

ISBN 0-7499-1446-7 (hardback)

ISBN 0-7499-1576-5 (paperback)

Copyright 1995 and 2011 by Alasdair White

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

All rights reserved.

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Published by White & MacLean Publishing at Smashwords

Smashwords edition: ISBN 978-2-930583-19-8

White & MacLean Publishing

La Houlette 3

1470 Baisy-Thy

Belgium

www.whiteandmaclean.eu

For Fiona, Riba, and Siobhán, whose understanding

and support made this book possible

Acknowledgments

It is normal for authors to thank all those who have contributed in anyway to the writing of the book – amongst the many others who have helped and to whom I am indebted, I would like to give special thanks to Philippe Paillart, Tom Evans, Jean-François Hautemulle, Karl Sergeant, and Bryn Thomas all of whom provided me with opportunities to develop, refine and test the ideas and skills presented in this book. Finally, my thanks go to Gill Cormode and her team at Piatkus Books without whom this book would never have seen the light of day.

Alasdair White

Belgium, 1995 and 2011

Table of Contents

A new introduction by the author, November 2011

Introduction

Part I: What are we trying to achieve, and how will we achieve it?

1. Management and Performance Management

2. Objectives and planning

Part II: Who is going to achieve the objective?

3. Personal development

4. Management style - the key to success

5. People: the human resource

6. Team development – coaching and training

7. Motivation

Part III: Achieving the objective

8. Office environment - physical and psychological

9. Cause, commitment and goals

10. Feedback – Seeing how we are doing

11. Where do you go from here?

Select reading list

A new introduction by the author, November 2011

This book had its origins in the late 1980s when neoliberalism and the economic beliefs of Milton Friedman held sway, when Reaganomics and Thatcherism ruled the Anglo-Saxon world and the communist blocs were crumbling. It was a time when Friedman, the 1976 Nobel Laureate for Economics, and his fellow economists of the ‘Chicago School’ had successfully proselytised the world into believing that free markets, the minimal intervention of governments, and the pursuit of personal good (for which one can read ‘wealth’) was a desirable objective in all circumstances.

It was the time when Gordon Gekko (played by Michael Douglas) in the 1987 film Wall Street famously declared: Greed, for the lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. And he was believed, admired, and emulated by thousands of bankers, traders, and entrepreneurs across the world. By the early 1990s, when I came to write Managing for Performance, neoliberalism had become the dominant economic paradigm of the world – from the Anglo-American heartlands of capitalism to the former communist bloc and all the way to the developing states.

Today, of course, neoliberalism has been discredited because the global economy, built on its principles, has been shaken to its core by the worst financial crisis in a hundred years – a crisis that has been blamed not only on the asset bubbles that were created, not only on the greed, materialism and the obsessive credit-driven consumerism, but also on the culture created by ‘Gekko-ism’ gone mad.

In many ways, Managing for Performance was an attempt to bring a more collective and collaborative approach to the management of people at a time when individualism ruled and it was passionately believed that money motivated everyone. The 2007 financial collapse, the analysis of the toxic cultures of the big banks (such as Lehman Brothers – the bank that started the domino collapse of the world’s banking system), and the continuing legacy of a theory that was pushed beyond a state of viability is still too close, and many companies and their managers are still in the thrall of the ‘Gekko-ism’, the individualism, the profit-driven management styles and the toxic cultures of the last twenty years.

When I was approached with the idea of re-issuing Managing for Performance, the initial discussions focused on updating the book for the 21st century. I soon realised that it would be far easier to write a completely new book on the subject but, upon reflection, I also realised that the ideas and techniques that had made Managing for Performance an international bestseller fifteen years ago were still absolutely valid today – only the context has changed.

The corporate and organisational cultures in which we work are now much better understood thanks to the work of people like Hofstede, Tromenaars, Deal and Kennedy, Bartlett et al, Schneider and Barsoux and many other researchers, who have dissected, analysed, synthesised, and generally exposed national and transnational organisations to examination, and have offered theories and guidance as to how to manage within them. One thing is now very clear to all managers: organisations reflect their national culture as modified by the culture of the people who work there. This means they have to select and apply those management techniques that work best with the people they are managing.

But isn’t that exactly what all managers have to do at all times and in all circumstances? Of course it is, and that is why the performance management techniques in Managing for Performance are as applicable today as they were when the book was written.

Would I change anything if I were to update the book? Well, yes – I would want to expand some sections (such as motivation) to reflect the latest research in the field and I would want to include sections on collaborative working, virtual teams (and virtual organisations) and managing in a networked world as they all place new emphasis on developing new performance management skills. I would also want to explore the current obsession with the idea that performance management is a technology-based activity (it isn’t, of course, it is about managing people: technology-based performance management applications are for monitoring purposes only).

Managing for Performance presents a number of timeless management skills that have proven to drive performance in organisational environments as diverse as US banking, Japanese engineering, African mining, volunteer charities, Middle Eastern oil production, healthcare, and European luxury goods. Used wisely and with a strong focus on managing people, these techniques will ensure that performance will follow no matter where you work or in which sector.

Alasdair White

Belgium 2011

Introduction

I have always found managing people a fascinating, frustrating, exhilarating, and extremely satisfying experience. The purpose of this book is to provide you with a range of techniques and ideas to make your management experience more rewarding, to help you achieve your objectives, and to help you manage for performance.

I was persuaded to write this book by the many managers who have come on my Performance Management Workshop seminar over the last three years. At the beginning of the week there was often a healthy degree of scepticism about the ideas presented – ‘after all, wasn’t this just another managing people type seminar’ – but by the end there was commitment.

This commitment was carried out into the workplace with outstanding results. One business actually achieved a 50% growth in profits following the implementation of all the concepts outlined and they clearly believed that the workshop’s training and ideas were what made it happen. Similar results have been achieved elsewhere – but I would like to make a very important point: the techniques and skills outlined in this book are only that – techniques and skills; it requires YOU to put them into practice and to make them work. Putting them into practice takes time and commitment and you must not expect an instant improvement in performance from your team – give it time and keep going, even when the going is hard.

Each chapter follows the same basic, easy-to-understand, structure – first there is a discussion of the theory and techniques involved, then we look at how to apply them and finally there is a brief bullet-point summary of the basic points.

Part I: What are we trying to achieve, and how will we achieve it?

1 Management and Performance Management

What is a manager? ● what is ‘Performance Management? ● what makes people ‘tick’? – the theory of motivation ● different management styles for different people ● office environment – a help or a hindrance?

What is a manager?

What is a manager? There are, of course, hundreds of answers to that question. My starting point is to define a manager as someone who manages a process and leads a team of people. If you have anybody reporting directly, or indirectly, to you then you are a manager and your main responsibility is to manage their activities and lead them towards delivering a superior performance. And to do this you need to use a range of people-management techniques – you need to be a leader.

But what is a leader? I do not see the role of a leader as being different from that of a manager – it is part of the same thing – and I generally use the two words interchangeably. However, if you visit any large bookshop and look at the titles on the shelves in the business section, you will find that many books, perhaps hundreds, have been written on the subject of leadership – what makes a good leader, and what are the qualities of a leader. Unfortunately for the general reader, much of the analysis has been undertaken by, and many of the books written by, academics, who mystify rather than demystify the subject. Almost all of the material suggests that leaders are born, not made, and that you cannot learn to be a leader.

This is not true.

Professor John Adair, when studying leadership, concluded that the most practical way to examine leadership was to observe what a leader does. Whilst acknowledging that leadership qualities and the situation in which the leader works undoubtedly play a part, Adair believes these aspects do not go far enough in determining success, and it is the actions that leaders need to take that are the most important. He narrowed these down into three critical areas:

achieving the task

building the team

developing the individual.

Adair concludes that it is the balance between these three areas that determines the success of the leader, and that if they are out of balance for any length of time there are likely to be adverse consequences.

I believe we can use the Adair model to look at the role of the manager – especially since the modern manager needs to be a leader. I think it is reasonably clear to most of us that the prospects for the old-style manager who was nothing but a glorified supervisor are strictly limited – much more is expected of today’s manager as companies de-layer, restructure, and re-engineer to allow them to succeed in the 1990s. The manager of today has to be a leader.

There are three clear areas of responsibility that all managers have to accept:

the responsibility for determining how the objective of his team will be achieved

the responsibility for ensuring the team members are selected, developed, trained, and carry out their responsibilities to a pre-determined standard that will allow them to achieve their objective, and

the responsibility for the motivation, performance, and personal development of the individual team members so that the objective is achieved.

The first area of responsibility is one of planning (‘achieving the task’), the second is one of team building and training (‘building the team’), and the third is one of performance management (‘developing the individual’). Unfortunately, most managers fail to plan – instead, they fight fires – they accept the team they are given and do little to develop it, and they have little understanding of performance management. The result is that they fail to achieve their objectives and generally blame ‘the bosses’ for unrealistic goals. In many companies this sort of management behaviour goes unchallenged due to a corporate culture that only pays lip service to accountability and extracts no retribution for failure.

To be effective managers we have to ensure that we are effective in each of the three main areas, to understand that they are interdependent, and to keep them in balance. The key is the ability to manage people: the skills involved in getting them to deliver their best performance are ones which we can all develop. It is a matter of learning to use a range of techniques in an appropriate manner: techniques we can all learn, which are not difficult to apply, and which are based on common sense and an understanding of why people do things.

What is ‘Performance Management’?

Performance Management is applying these techniques to get the best possible performance from you and your team in any given circumstance, so that you can achieve your goals and objectives. This is a very sweeping statement so let me explain.

Let me start by defining ‘performance’. The Oxford English Dictionary defines ‘performance’ as ‘the process or manner of performing’ or ‘to accomplish or to execute’. Therefore, the best performance is ‘the best process of accomplishing’ whatever it is you want to accomplish – be it reaching a sales goal, making a profit, getting more out of your life, winning a medal, becoming a concert pianist or anything else you care to mention.

Secondly, the OED defines ‘to manage’ as ‘to have under effective control’ with ‘management’ being the ‘process of managing’.

Given these definitions, it is clear that ‘Performance Management’ is the effective control of the best process of accomplishing whatever has to be accomplished.

A great deal has already been written about almost all aspects of management and many influential thinkers have turned the whole subject into a ‘science’, with rules, processes, theories, and all the paraphernalia that entails. We have scientific management, situational management, behavioural management, and many more schools of thought, all of which have valid contributions to make to understanding the role of the manager within organisations, but fail to address themselves to the enhancement of the performance of the individuals who make up that organisation and on whom its success depends.

In Performance Management we are not concerned with the systems and processes that are involved in our work, nor are we deeply concerned with scientific management theories – although a little background is called for to explain why the techniques work. What we are concerned with is the management of people and how you can obtain a better performance