WHICH DO YOU MANAGE BETTER: YOUR ASSETS OR YOUR RESOURCES?

At PBI, we like to ask, “What’s your organization’s greatest asset?” Almost universally, the answer we get is “The People.” When we say “No,” there is great surprise and silence. We go on to explain that our experience is that your greatest asset is your organization’s reputation (it opens doors, closes doors, attracts certain types of employees, customers, suppliers, etc.). However, your greatest resource is your people. So … how well does your organization manage the performance of your people?

From a performance perspective, most organizations desire a high performance workforce that leads to Organizational Excellence (described in the page on High Performance Organizations). However, we have found that while many organizations have detailed and robust systems for planning, forecasting, and measuring their financial/budget issues, they lack similar detail and sophistication in how they do the same for Human Capital Management, Performance Management, and performance improvement. Why is this so? To a degree, it’s because organizations (backed by the financial industry), have developed more robust tools and training programs to help them do their financial/budget work. We feel it’s also an indication of the comfort level of most managers who have more knowledge and comfort in dealing with concrete budget issues vs. undefined people ones.

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: WHAT IS IT & WHY DO YOU NEED IT?

Performance Management is the science and art of translating an organization’s Vision and Values (we say its Strategic Direction) into jointly defined performance expectations that can be measured and (with proper feedback) lead to improved performance.

PBI helps all types of organizations in the Virginia, Maryland, Washington D.C. and Mid-Atlantic region create, improve, and maximize both their Performance Measurement and Performance Management systems.

The Performance Management approach to achieving Organizational Excellence has been proven successful in diagnosing and resolving, as well as preventing, workforce performance problems by helping identify problems that have a training root cause/solution and those that need a non-training intervention (right person, right role, right environment, right performance support, etc.). You’d be surprised how often you can achieve the desired improvements simply by managing the performance better instead of providing training.

This is important because everything in an organization (strategy, budgets, equipment, processes, etc.) is latent until touched by people. People design, plan, and execute most everything that an organization does; machines and computers only carry out directions that people give them. Therefore, Performance Management should be front and center in every organization—to define how you will:

• Attract (recruit, screen, and select)
• Develop (orient, train, mentor, coach)
• Give developmental assignments
• Retain (challenge, value, manage well) your best people.
• And have these "all stars" bring other all stars into your organization!