The Essence of Performance Management

In Collapse Jared Diamond writes "Businesses have changed when the public came to expect and require different behavior, to reward businesses for behavior that the public wanted, and to make things difficult for businesses practicing behaviors that the public didn't want."

To me that is the essence of performance management. Read that same statement this way, in the context of managers and employees: "Employees have changed when their manager came to expect and require different behavior, to reward employees for behavior the manager wanted, and to make things difficult for employees practicing behaviors the manager didn't want."

To often we try to make this process more complicated than it actually is. Behavior reinforcement theory at its simplest.

Note: For those of you working on PHR/SPHR this is Skinnerian Reinforcement Theory found in Module 3.

Reasons Some HR Departments Make Disasterous Decisions

I have just finished reading Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. The book is an excellent and eye-opening discussion of how societies, both ancient and modern, have determined their own fates. Some have disappeared and some have survived and thrived. The book ends with a warning about where we as a global society are headed today. I heartly recommend it and thank an unremembered Tweeter for suggesting it. But my purpose today is not to talk environment or history. As with many things I read I try to apply the lessons I learn to business and human resources. And there are a couple in this book I will be posting about.

The lesson for this post deals with Diamond's four reasons some societies make disasterous decisions, and as you can see my title for this post is a take-off on his chapter heading. The four reasons are as follows:

• Reason 1- Groups may do disastrous things because they fail to anticipate a problem before it arrived. One of the lessons I try to teach in the PHR/SPHR certification classes I conduct is that HR should be viewed as a system and not a collection of programs. There should not be a comp program, a recruiting program, a safety program, a training program, a retention program, etc. There needs to be an HR system the interweaves all of those pieces. Failure to do so can lead to unforseen consequences, such as a bonus program that leads to decreased morale due to perceived imbalances in the way it is administered. Having a system mentality may help you anticipate disasterous results and avoid them.
• Reason 2- Failing to perceive a problem that has actually arrived. There are three reasons this may occur. First, the origins of some problems are literally imperceptible. Second, distant managers who are not on the scene may fail to realize there is a problem. Third, the problem has grown at such a slow trend that the people in the midst of the problem do not see the problem. Decreased morale leading to a slow talent leak may be a good example. Onsite managers do not perceive there is a problem because "that is just the way things are" and distant managers do not visit often enough to perceive it. Perhaps no one is tracking the people losses or lack of productivity close enough to notice.
• Reason 3- Failing to attempt to even solve a problem once it has arrived. There are several reasons for this that fall under the term "rational behavior." These include: feeling unempowered to make a correction; thinking it is "not my problem", or even more insidious, "it is in my best interests to not make a correction" or being selfish. I once did a post on the Munchausen Syndrome, where managers make problems in order to solve problems. I know many HR "professionals" who do not feel empowered enough in their jobs to suggest solutions and some that even avoid doing so because they fear for their jobs and don't want to "make waves." Other rational behaviors include a clash of interests between upper management and front line managers or HR.
• Reason 4-  Even though we perceive a problem we still fail because the problem may be beyond our present capacities to solve, a solution may be prohibitively expensive, or our efforts may be too little and too late. Decreasing productivity, turnover leading to a brain drain, massive safety violations, major FLSA violations, class action discrimination or union activity are all examples that might fit into this catagory.

Diamond's discussion of these reasons as it applies to society is much more thorough than is my discussion here of how it applies to HR. I suggest you read Chapter 14 of this book (if you are not reading the book) to get a further analysis.

The good news is that none of this has to happen. It however requires couragous leaders and couragous people. For a Human Resources professional to meet this challenge they must do the following:

• Be educated in ongoing HR issues and have a SYSTEMS mentality.
• Be aware of trends in the community, the workforce and the industry in which they work.
• Have a broader perspective than just the "immediate".
• Be aware of how other organizations have addressed and solved, or failed to solve, problems of a similar nature.
• Be courageous. Have a VOICE. Don't be afraid to address the "rational behavior" that is counter productive to the success of the organization.

I hope you follow my advice and read Diamond's book and apply his societal lessons to your workplace. You will be a better HR professional for it.

Resistance to Change: Does It Doom Us to Failure?

I am reading a book by Jared Diamond, called Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. I find it to be a stimulating read, and if you click on the link you will find it has been reviewed 444 or more times, so others have found it stimulating as well. I am not really going to get into the nature of the book, but I did want to talk about the resistance to change. Diamond shows that a society's resistance to change, its unwillingness to change, can lead to its downfall. It is not a sole determiner. The use or misuse of resources, climate change, and competitors also contribute societies disappearing. As I read this I was struck at how well this can be applied to companies and business as well.

We have seen an number of companies go out of business. They have been overwhelmed by a competitor, or they have borrowed too much money (the equivalent of cutting down all their trees), or the climate has changed (recession as ice age?) and they have not adapted. But the other big factor is resistance to change. Diamond, on page 275, makes the following comment ".... the values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs over adversity." Most of us can think of examples of companies that, as things change around them, they redouble their efforts to keep doing business the same way they have been rather than adapt to the new environment. A software company I worked for did something along those lines. Selling a mainframe based software, business started to suffer as midrange software became available. Rather than adapt the management tried to keep competitors from appearing and redoubled the effort to sell mainframe software. Unfortunately, clinging to this technology and ways only led to the demise of the company and today it is only a distant memory.

So Jared Diamond's warning to societies can also apply to companies as well. Is your business adapting? Or are you too resistant to change? Is your management team clinging to what had been successful or moving to what will be successful? How often do you hear "Well that is the way we have always done it"?

I think it is interesting that humans can, at the same time, have resiliancy as a hallmark and also resistance to change as a hallmark. Reading Diamond's discussions of societies long past shows that we are not so different than our ancestors. We do many of the same things, we just may do them faster and on a larger scale. What is the old saying "Those whom ignore history are bound to repeat it?"

So I recommend Collapse as a stimulating read for HR professionals for the business lessons and societal lessons that can be learned. You want to be proactive and knowledgeable then grab yourself a copy.