Performance Management Drives Business Results

As a business owner, what tools are available to assure your business is continually improving? If you are a sports fan, you know that the best teams never rest on their laurels. Year after year, their focus is on getting even better. Never good enough! And central to their drive for excellence is the continuous assessment and development of their players.

It’s no different for a business. It’s unlikely you will win if a central part of your business strategy is not focused on managing and developing your talent. Having in place a well thought out performance management process or, as Marcus Buckingham calls it, a performance development process (PDP), ...is the most powerful performance-driving process in your company. Set ing big goals and delivering regular feedback improves individual performance-full stop.

No one will tell you that designing the PDP is easy. It requires challenging and sometimes
unpleasant work. But the results are worth it:

  • Over an 11 year time frame, companies that had a performance management culture
    grew net income by 756% vs. a 1% growth over the same period for those did not.2
  • Departments with managers who receive feedback on their strengths achieve 8.9%
    greater profitability.3
  • CFO’s spend at least 40% of their time on business performance management but
    estimate that 30% of their company’s performance potential is lost due to ineffective
    performance management processes and behaviors.4
  • Companies that implement regular feedback have turnover rates that are 14.9% lower
    than for employees who receive no feedback.5

And its impact on other critical talent management processes cannot be over stated. As can be seen from the below chart, the PDS collects and feeds important data to all of the processes that make up a talent management system:

If your performance development process is not delivering the business results you wanted
or expected or if you have yet to even install such, please reach out to me. Your employees
and investors will appreciate it.

  1. Marc Effron, “ An Update-The Hard Truth about Effective Performance Management” . Talent Management Quarterly. 7/24/14
  2. John Kotter. “ Does corporate culture drive financial performance” ? Forbes, 2/10/11
  3. Jim Asplund and Nikki Balacksmith. “ The Secret of Higher Performance” . Gallup. 5/3/11
  4. Don Weobong. “ 10 Statistics about Performance Management that Will Blow Your Mind” . Talent Management 360. 9/22/15.
  5. Jim Asplund and Mikki Blacksmith. “ The Secret of Higher Performance” . Gallup. 5/3/11.