Performance Management- Ten Steps to Bridge Strategy and Execution

By Matt Angello and Ira S Wolfe

Many organizations struggle with executing their business plans. The root cause of this struggle can be as varied as the businesses themselves. The purpose of this document is to provide leaders with the ten essential steps to move an organization from strategy to execution.

Unlocking the potential of your organization requires discipline of definition, communication and alignment. Without these disciplines, your business “plans” will become at best, broken dreams and unfilled “hopes.” The following ten steps will guide your organization on the disciplined path to a successful future.

Step 1- Determine the Destination.
Before an organization can move forward, every employee needs to know the destination. This destination is typically “charted” through clearly and concisely articulated vision, mission and values statements. Vision is an
organization’ s reason for existence and long-term desired state. It answers the question “who are we and what do we want to be?” It often includes a reference to the competitive set, e.g. size, profitability, market share, positioning, etc. Without a vision, an
organization will lack purpose, passion and energy. Mission usually describes the enablers of the vision (“how” it will be achieved), often including references to customers, suppliers and employees. Finally, values describe the inviolable beliefs and guiding principles of the organization, which govern the behavior of everyone in the organization.

Step 2- Set the Course.
Charting the course to the destination ensures that everyone is moving in the right direction. This is accomplished through strategic and operating plans. Strategic plans set the course over a time horizon, typically 3-5 years. These plans include detailed strategies for achieving the vision of the organization over time (market share, profitability, sales growth, product development, entering/exiting markets, etc). To be effective, the strategic plan must lay-out in clear terms what is expected, the current gaps to these expectations, detailed descriptions of the actions to close the gaps and the specified time to do so. Strategic plans are not broadly communicated to employees.

Operating plans are the distillation of the strategic plan over a shorter planning horizon, usually annual. They specify the deliverables of the strategic plan, including objectives and specific/measureabl e outcomes which must be achieved within specified time frames
and budgets. Operating plans must be broadly communicated to employees to ensure that everyone is on the proper course.

Step 3- Spread the News.
Ensure that the key operating plan objectives are disseminated from executive management to employees. This is an opportunity with high engagement building potential for many organizations. Because executive management spends so much time discussing the business with one-another, they tend to assume that employees share their understanding of the key priorities. Absent disciplined communication, this transfer simply does not happen. Start the process by establishing an “owner” for each of the objectives in the operating plan, and communicating the expectation to them. These individuals may or may not have been involved in establishing the objective as part of the planning process. This step ensures that there is no ambiguity as to who is responsible to champion and deliver the initiative. Diffuseness of responsibility is a sure-fire first step to non-execution.

Step 4- Be Clear.
Ensure there is clarity around the delivery date and the financial value of the respective objectives. If dates and/or target values change after the creation of the operating plan, the owner of the objective needs to know.

Step 5- Name the Team.
The owner of the objective must take the time to identify all of the participants who need to be engaged in the achievement of the objective through a “cascade” process. Additionally, they need to ensure (either directly or through a review process) that each participant has an appropriate success measure for their component and an agreed upon time frame for its delivery. Of course, the components and dates need to build in a logical progression to achieve the objective as outlined in the operating plan.

This is typically accomplished in the context of a project plan, which should readily identify all the individuals who have a role to play. The goal alignment process associated with any objective should not stop until the individual contributors to that
objective are identified. It is important to remember that all of the participants in the achievement of an objective will not necessarily fall into the reporting structure of the leader.

Step 6- First things First,
Significant power results when every employee is linked either directly or indirectly to one of the operating objectives. Many linkages will be identified through the cascade process described above, but others will not. If they cannot, then identify other SMART objectives, tied closely to operating performance using the process outlined in the following steps.

Step 7- Define Success.
Each employee should have no more than five SMART objectives, i.e. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound. If the objective outgrows a project plan, the measures in the project plan should be used for the
individual employee. If not, then focus on objectives that are directly or indirectly tied to the attainment of operating plan drivers, and/or to the most important department deliverables. Avoid low impact, work tasks becoming listed as objectives.

 Step 8- Break Ties.
It is possible that employees will have conflicting objectives. There needs to be a process to break ties. It cannot be as simple as the immediate manager review, because they may not share accountability with their employee for a particular objective. An example of this could surface in the project planning teams previously discussed, where a department employee, but not necessarily the manager, could play a critical role. In this case, the project manager needs to be involved in the decision as to which objectives take precedence. To ensure an adequate review of objectives, a twolevel approval process is preferred. This process requires that all objectives are reviewed and approved by the second level manager. To the extent that there is a conflict with a project team leader and a department manager, the conflict will be resolved with the second level manager.

 Step 9- Stay Fluid and Think Linked.
Objectives are not evergreen. Priorities have a way of changing with the ebbs and flows of market conditions. Be aware that every time a critical business initiative changes in part or in whole, the objectives of all those
employees who are tied to that initiative must be revisited. To ensure that you do not miss the opportunity to stay linked to changing requirements, managers and employees should revisit their objectives on a regular basis informally, and formally once per quarter. Post the objectives in an obvious location and keep them top of mind. Managers and project leaders should ask to review the objectives when meeting with employees. There are a number of software solutions that are available in the marketplace to assist with this process.

 Step 10- Dance with Your Stars.
Linking pay and incentives in part or in whole to performance against objectives has been demonstrated time and again to have a positive impact on their achievement and company results. High performers embrace such plans, particularly those that provide direct “line of sight,” meaning there is a direct relationship between the employee’s performance and their pay. Weaker performers do not like such programs for obvious reasons. A strongly aligned objective process, as described above provides the best basis for making development, pay and promotion decisions that motivate your star performers and establishes a foundation of performance excellence organization- wide.

About the Authors
Matthew Angello, Principal Consultant and Executive Coach
Matt Angello brings over 25 years of business experience to his practice as a consultant and executive coach, including several years as a Board-Level Executive Officer in Fortune 500 companies. He is an accomplished strategist with expertise in executive and team coaching, organization development, change management, performance and process improvement, and communications. He has experience as both an independent consultant/business owner and global business executive across multiple industries and for companies in various stages of their business cycle.

Matt is the Founder and Principal of Bright Tree Consulting Group, a boutique firm that offers an array of highly personalized and effective coaching and consulting services for executives and companies seeking to unleash their potential, move their performance to the next level and prepare for future challenges. He has partnered with many CEO’s, Boards of Directors and other “C-Level” executives to improve their effectiveness. His clients include start-ups, privately held companies and Fortune 500 global firms. He is an accomplished coach, strategist, team builder and people developer with a global track record. Matt is a recognized human capital expert, and has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Human Resources Executive and other publications. He has been the featured speaker at many seminars and has served on the Board of Directors of national organizations. He received his BA from the University of Pittsburgh and an MS from Rutgers University.

Ira Wolfe, Assessment Consultant and Executive Coach
Ira Wolfe brings nationally recognized expertise in personality and skill assessment to his role at Bright Tree Consulting Group. As founder and president of his own consulting company, Success Performance Solutions, Ira has helped organizations across the United States find and hire the right employees, align people with business operating objectives, and identify high-potential leaders.

In 1999 Ira delivered a provocative and compelling forecast of the 10 and 20 year labor market. It wasn't long before Ira found himself speaking to audiences all over North America about The Perfect Labor Storm, resulting in the 2005 publication of a book by the same name. His newest book, The Perfect Labor Storm 2.0: Workforce Trends That Will Change The Way You Do Business has been described by readers as "fantastic," "outstanding," and "required reading for every Human Resource Professional, business owner, and elected official." Ira is also the author of Understanding Business Values and Motivators. Ira has trademarked a highly successful system, called CriteriaOne®, to assist organizations in job benchmarking, employee selection, and managing performance.

Ira is a highly sought-after expert for interviews in dozens of publications, including The Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeekOnline, as well as being the frequent guest on several business cable news shows discussing workforce trends, employee hiring and retention strategies. Ira has been the featured keynote at a wide variety of conferences, conventions, association meetings and Chamber of Commerce audiences, reaching thousands of business leaders and human resource professionals every year.

Ira started his career as a highly successful dentist who grew a large practice in central Pennsylvania. The need to hire the right staff piqued his interest in assessment and he pursued this field with intensity, ultimately achieving his current prominence as a national expert. He received his B.S. degree from Muhlenberg College and his DMD degree from University of Pennsylvania. He is nearing completion of his Master's Degree in Leadership and Ethics at Duquesne University.

THE ART OF LIVING IN LANGUAGE

From: L. Michael Hall

Oct. 19, 2008

We live in language. As a species of life we have no full fledge instincts, but only "instinctoids" (Abraham Maslow). Our instinct is to learn and create mental models in our heads ("maps" Alfred Korzybski) is what makes us "a semantic class of life." Not knowing what anything "is," or means, or what leads to what (causation), we have to learn. We have to discover. We have to formulate, conclude, and construct a model of reality. We have to create meaning and we do so at multiple levels.

So we live in language as a chief inner context in our minds which then governs what we see, what we perceive, what we feel, what we expect, etc. With the words that we accept, absorb, and invent we live inside them so that they govern what we are prepared to see. If we say that something is "terrible," horrible," "awful" so it becomes to us.

"Criticism is horrible; I hate it. I'm just not able to handle it when people don't like me. I always fall apart."

How's that for a toxic thought? A toxic instruction? A pathology-creating hypnotic induction? And that's just one of many, many, many that we all face everyday of our lives. Want more? Here's a sick list of thoughts full of semantic toxicity:

"Over the hill." "I'm having a senior moment." "I think I'm cursed when it comes to money; nothing ever goes right for me." "It's his fault, if he had not made me feel insignificant and worthless, I wouldn't have given up so easily." "I'm alcoholic." "Change is hard and painful."

By language we create our categories of reality and by an unthinking acceptance and use of words, we experience and feel things that undermine our effectiveness and leash our potentials. I often tell the story of Wendell Johnson (People in Quandries, 1946) and his chapter, "The Indians Have No Word for it" (Chapter 17). As a speech pathologist and stutterer himself, Dr. Johnson studied two Native American Indian cultures (Bannock and Shoshone Indians) and could not find anyone who stuttered. And it so happened that their languages had no word for "stuttering. " That idea, that category, that experience is not punctuated by their language, so the experience of "stuttering" didn't exist for them. At first they didn't understand what he was referring to. To even communicate what he was referring to, his associate, John Snidecor, had to demonstrate stuttering. So when a child spoke in a non-fluent way, no one noticed. It didn't exist.

"Speech defects were simply not recognized. The Indian children were not criticized or evaluated on the basis of their speech, no comments were made about it, no issue was made of it. In their semantic environments there appeared to be no speech anxieties or tensions for the Indian children to interiorize, to adopt as their own. This, together with the absence of a word for stuttering in the Indians' language, constitutes the only basis on which I can at this time suggest an explanation for the fact there were no stutterers among these Indians." (p. 443)

Later when Johnson found children from those groups who had been adopted by white families he found those who did stutter. In the new English language, the category of stuttering did exist and so those kids raised in that culture learned to punctuate it as something that as reality and then learned to fear it as something dreadful. They then began to live in the language of stuttering.

For better and worse, we all live in a world of language. When we say a word, we call a world into being. It's a creator power. Genesis describes the beginning occurring when God spoke the world into being, "And God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light," yet we also share in that same creative power. As we use language, so we create our reality and then operate within it semantically. In our languaging, our meanings are created.

Without language, we would live life moment-by-moment without any awareness of ourselves or life itself. We would lack "... narrative, evaluation, comparison, and contemplation. We would not know who we are, where we are going, or whether or not we have gotten there—the very issues..." that make life human and meaningful for us (Jay Efran, Michael Lukens, Robert Lukens, Language, Structure, and Change, 1990).

"Without language, there is only 'now'—life unfolding moment by moment without self-consciousness or meaning. With the advent of language, an observing 'self' is created and experience is evaluated. Those evaluations continuously and recursively modify what is being experienced, leading to the self-referential quagmire that generates business for psychotherapists. " (p. 33-34)

So given that we live in language to this extent, then what is the art of living in language? How can we live with language and in language so that it supports us and enhances our life?

Obviously the art begins with awareness of language. First we need to become mindful of our words and mindful of what we are doing with our words. What are you doing with your words? And, what are your words doing for you? This is the neuro-linguistic and neuro-semantic facet of language. Language does things to us! Language gets into our eyes so that we see the world in terms of our words and concepts. Language induces us into states. Language gets encoded in our body, in muscle memory. Now you know why Meta-Coaches and Neuro-Semanticists are always asking,

"Do you hear what you're saying?"

"As you hear yourself say that and use those words, what are you aware of?"

"Hearing yourself say that, how will you start to clean up your language and frame things in ways that support you?"

Once you recognize that you live your life in language and always will, the next step is to quality control your language so that you can choose life-enhancing and empowering ways to speak and encode things.

"What cognitive distortions have you found in your language today?"

"How empowering is that term, concept, understanding, or belief?

"How is your language?"

"What are some of your best formulas that unleash your potentials?"

There's more— and that's the subject of the next Meta Reflection.

Need Insurance? Just Compare and Choose

Perhaps it is a time for you to buy and insurance product for your properties, or even for your life. Unfortunately, oftentimes we are getting confused with the many offering from insurance agents from middle scale insurance companies or even from big insurance companies with their each advantages and benefits.

What insurance do you need? You may need car insurance, home-insurance or perhaps life insurance, then there will be many offers in terms of discounted insurance premium, cash bonus, gift bonus that you may not need it, or even facilities offer that didn't have any correlation with the insurance itself.

In the other side you will be rethinking in term of your claim status you may propose. Will it be paid or not? The smoothness of claim payment will depend on the simply and easily claim terms and condition, and the liquidity status of the insurance company.

How do you get auto insurance or car insurance quotes for instance? You have to choose. Precisely you have to compare among several insurance companies for each insurance product you want to buy. This is not an easy effort. It will be costly, energy and time paying, and that's why people often impelled to believe in friends, relatives, newspaper or even the agents itself.

In the high tech era nowadays you will not be occupied by this insurance comparison effort. Through insurance1.com you can just select your insurance product you need and get up to 4 different quotes from competing insurance agents by filling out just one easy form.

Technology should make anything simpler and easier, not more complicated nor even destructive.

Does Your Courier Come Late?

It isn't news that electronic communication technology has become the information transfer paradigm. That obvious fact was reinforced to me when I was asked for my contact information recently and it was only after having provided my personal and business e-mail addresses, my business and home phone numbers, my cell phone number and my fax numbers that it occurred to me as an afterthought to include my street address. In today's world. Unless you play on having someone visit you, providing a physical address is an almost pointless exercise.

But it's important that we not overstate that point; there remain a number of reasons that we may need to employ our physical address beyond the need for a personal visit.

The delivery of products in business requires door-to-door transfer for one physical address to another. Even some information is, by preference, delivered in a physical format; our newspaper and magazines are physically dropped off at our homes and offices. And although business can normally be transacted almost entirely in cyberspace, there remain some things that need to be done in the physical world. While, for example, electronic signatures are becoming more and more accepted, for some purposes an original signature on a document is required; that necessitates the physical delivery of an executed document.

It wasn't so long ago that the postal system was the delivery mechanism of choice. Remember Sherlock Holmes? "This little missive arrived in the morning post, Watson. It seems our new client is to arrive on the two-fourteen at Charing Cross Station. The game is afoot!"

In Victorian England, there were three mail deliveries a day in big cities, allowing someone to write a letter in the morning, knowing it would arrive by noon.

Of course that has all changed. The postal system, even in locales where it is known for its reliability, is largely used for the unimportant, the non time-sensitive, and the insignificant. The junk. If it absolutely, positively must get there, and get there by a certain date or time, other methods are used.

In Jakarta, we use private couriers. We have many suicidal young men with motorcycles who, for a very reasonable fee will take their hands and brave the city traffic to ensure that your announcements, tickets, invitations, manuscript, contracts and confirmations will get to the recipient on time. This is the city's informal courier system. In Western cities like New York and Toronto, These couriers use bicycles and go even faster, I know people who will send a written confirmation of their intention to attend a meeting just as they are getting into the car, they know the confirmation will arrive before they do.

For intercity delivery of letters and small packages there is a variety of courier services to select from, each of which offers a variety of options. Same day, next day, pot luck. Like so many other services in Jakarta, unless you choose one of the brand-name couriers, there is no way to tell how reliable or efficient your choice of carrier will be …you have to rely on word of mouth references from someone you trust. In any case, unless you use a service that is big enough to run its own air cargo service, your precious package could be transported via Adam Air and end up floating on the Sulawesi Sea.

For packages an letters that have to go to foreign destinations, the big courier companies are as reliable in Indonesia as they are anywhere in the world. Any reputable company from Purolator and FedEx to UPS will do the job. It's when Indonesia is on the receiving end that you will occasionally run into problems.

The problem isn't with the companies; it's the usual bureaucratic bottleneck. For get the postal system it you need to take receipt of anything important or valuable. There is no telling when something will arrive, where it will arrive, or in what condition it will arrive, or in what condition it will arrive. It is not at all unusual to find your urgently awaited package, three months late, if you find it at all, in a pile in a back corner of a post office, water damaged, opened and partly resealed with cello-tape, with anything valuable missing.

But the blame does not rest entirely with the postal system. Other bureaucracies are responsible for the delays in receiving packages from abroad. Many businesspeople find themselves waiting for unconscionably long periods of time for overseas shipments to be delivered, not because of transportation delays, but because of the official and unofficial bureaucratic requirements in the ports and at customs.

One of the universities at which I teach encountered a problem in taking delivery of a shipment of textbooks. By coincidence, as a part of a policy of employing world-class business standards, that institution had recently instituted an iron-clad policy of refusing to pay bribes to government officials. In the absence of the port officials being greased, the book were not released for months and we in Indonesia had to make do with substandard teaching materials in one of our universities.

Less serious but bitterly amusing is the way these bottlenecks make Indonesia look to the rest of the world. I write a column for an Indonesian version of a Southeast Asian regional magazines. At the moment the editorial content of the magazines is prepared here in Jakarta but it is printed in Singapore and shipped to Indonesia for national distribution. The magazines of course, is held up in port for the usual reasons and the Indonesian version of an international magazines is only available to subscribers in its own country about a month after it can be found on the stands in Singapore, Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur. Since I have to go to Singapore fairly frequently, I can usually pick up a copy there or on the airplane, weeks before my contributor's copy is delivered to my house…by courier.