‘What I expect from you all is to consistently improve your performance!’ When have you last expressed this message to your staff members? If you haven’t mentioned anything like this in the last six months you must not be aware of the economic difficulties we are in. Any organisation whether on its last legs or still doing fine needs to consistently improves its organisation. The emphasis is on consistently, not a once in a blue moon, but on a daily, weekly basis finding ways to improve what you are doing for a living. This has been the essential business message for the last number of months.

Furthermore all of your staff in the organisation need to be striving for improvements, not just management or a handful of motivated individuals, all of them! To achieve this you need leadership and motivation from management. However, very few people have been doing this.

What most people have been doing over the last number of years was trying to find a simple way to make a quick buck.

To achieve the leadership to change your organisation into an improvements culture you need to demonstrate that you as leader will show performance improvements consistently, that you can explain where you want to bring your organisation and what improvements you expect in the next 6 months. You need to create an organisational culture which values consistent improvements, that all employees take ownership for the culture of performance improvements and not just management.

You need to understand that performance is about behaviour which we demonstrate on a daily basis. To improve performance we need to change our behaviour: we need to start doing things differently to what we have been doing before. If we keep doing the same things nothing will change and no improvements will be achieved.

It takes a great determination to change one’s daily, weekly behaviour and start doing something different and keep consistently following the path of performance improvements. To improve your performance you first need to know what you have been doing over the last period and what results your organisation achieved. Then you need to establish what you are going to do differently and measure the results of the new behaviour, check if there is an improvement and if not to find out why and try something new again and measure what the results are until you have achieved a significant improvement. Then find another point which needs improvements and start all over again.

To really improve your organisation you need as a manager to take the following issues to heart:

• Focus on the behaviour of your employees – look at what people do, not who or what they are. Make sure people start changing their daily behaviour 
  
• Focus on asking people instead of telling them. Involve people in you new approach and ask them for their opinion as most employees have a good knowledge of what their daily work is. Keep challenging them to improve their output by finding new ways to work. 
  
• Base feedback and evaluation on things that are observable and measurable. Give constant constructive feedback and measure what has been done and the result of actions taken.
  
• Recognise the actions that accelerate performance and do more of them
  
• Learn to identify performance blocking behaviour and stop it!

People change their behaviour either when they see the light or feel the heat. Change is continuous but mostly in little steps. As the demands of jobs change (technology, competition, objectives, resources, responsibility, skills, knowledge etc.) behaviour must change to meet those demands.

If you want to talk to Kenneth Buchholtz, Chartered FCIPD, MBS, about Human Resources issues then give him a call at 065 7071933.

Campbell International
Human Resource Consultants
Cloncoul House
Ennistymon
Co Clare
Ireland

Telephone:  00 353 65 7071933
Fax:  00 353 65 7071933
Email:  info@campbellinternational.net
http://www.campbellinternational.net/

© Kenneth Buchholtz, Chartered FCIPD, MBS