Engagement Royale
January 27th, 2010 by Lois Melbourne
First Quarter of the year is often the peak of the performance review and goal setting season. I have a few tips which are making these sessions much more enjoyable at Aquire this year.
Performance management is often a challenge for the manager. It’s important to recap the annual feedback during these discussions. Hopefully, your reviews are more about the future than about the past. I tried for years to call them goal setting sessions and projections instead of reviews. I have not succeeded in the renaming, but we have succeeded in the content of the conversation. Our processes are geared towards looking at the future; setting the goals and, now, about succession planning and career development in more earnest and in common, corporate-wide terminology.
How did we get a real succession planning discussion going? We asked everybody the question.
In our annual employee meeting, I presented an outline of the revenue growth and proposed product growth of the company through 2015. This led to breakout discussions allowing individuals to talk about where they wanted to be in 2015, and what the company would have to look like to get there. Oh, my gosh, for all of you saying “that would never work here,” try it – or find another place to work.
Because it was awe-inspiring. Honest, and sometimes a stretch of the imagination, conversations occurred across all levels. People were helping others in different departments paint a picture of the future of the company and possibilities for growth.
They were on FIRE.
The follow-up exercise now is for each manager to discuss these aspirations and their subsequent development plans during the goal setting process this month. Because each employee was involved in the discussion, they know the managers and co-workers were asked to draw a greater picture. It changes some of the succession planning discussion to a personally-chosen career development program. The management teams are now looking at new types of “next step” development activities. We’re aggregating training ideas across disciplines, and building opportunities for mentoring and coaching, along with formal training to help people get much further than the traditional “what training must we have to get the jobs done this year” exercise.
It’s another tool in great workforce planning to know where people want to go – not just where managers want to put them. Let’s just call it Engagement Royale!
Cheers,
Lois
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Awesome post. I love the transparency aspect of what you describe. No wonder your company is so successful. Keep up the great work. We are taking a page out of your book at Talent Revolution.