Digest: Performance Management
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Digest: Performance Management

Meeting Date
June 16, 2022
Event Type
Workshop
đŸ‡«đŸ‡· / đŸ‡ș🇾
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Workshop with Jean-Phillipe Martin and Gil Orfila from Visconti Partners on Performance Management.

During this session, founders discussed:

→ How to find the right posture to engage your team as a leader?

→ How to better align your agenda with your strategy? (Dos and don'ts)

→ What methodology to choose and how to implement it? (OKRs, 4DX...)

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This format differs from our other events through its coaching approach made possible by Visconti's expertise.

👇 Here are the slides and the OKR template shared by Visconti (in French):

Performance Management comes from 3 things:

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1. Posture of a Leader

There must be a shift from the CEO to Chief Engagement Officer: mission-driven, be a resource for teams and become a coach who removes barriers.

As your company is growing, founders and CEOs need to switch from execution to leadership role to build and execute ambitious strategies with their teams.

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"Chief Engagement Officer, a position designed to unite employees around the company”

The Chief Engagement Officer is also responsible for fostering internal communication by facilitating coordination between the various departments and maintaining dialogue between executives, managers and employees. Among his other missions, he must commit to providing feedback on employees' performance through precise indicators and enlighten each employee on his place in this transformation process. These are all initiatives that can help employees embrace change.

"Any attempt at a new strategy is futile if it is not accompanied by this indispensable cultural and practical leap in which the leader must be the first actor and the best evangelist.”
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Performance Management is based on having short-term goals that will serve the long-term strategy of your company.

2. The Vision before Action Plans

The Performance Galaxy: aligning the planets (diagram)

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The Leader is at the core and he’s the one who embodies the mission and purpose of the company.

Even if it’s sometimes unclear, it’s key for the Leader to clarify the 3-5 year ambition of the startup. This vision of the future will turn into the strategy to put in place in order to get there.

Giving meaning to what the performance of the team will create for the company makes the ambition lead to an action plan.

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In other words, sharing the mission of your company with your team is spreading your culture. Know that repetition is an art: don’t shy away of repeating again and again the mission: it can only be beneficial.

This should start at the onboarding of a new employee to make them a key ally to execute the action plan.

3. Engage your Team for performance

The Culture and Strategy matrix:

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This matrix is a good reminder that having an engaged team is the guarantee for sustainable performance. Easier said than done: finding the performance range is all about balance.

→ Bringing your team together torwards the same “goal” comes from having a solid Culture. Take the necesarry time to craft it and test it with your team as it grows.

→ Your Strategy and planning need to be fullproof and consistent. It’s not short term so you cannot change directions every other day.

For a given company, here’s the theoretical breakdown of the team:

  • BORE-OUT = 25%
  • SUSTAINABLE EXCELLENCE = 10%
  • BROWN-OUT = 45%
  • BURN-OUT = 10%
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What the founders had to say on strategy alignment: → Through regular communication in group meetings + a reinforced treatment with the middle management you can expect big enthusiasm from the team after the meetings.

→ Having updates every Monday with objectives and strategic matters works quite well. It’s a way to realign everybody and share/validate initiatives (both in failures and successes)

→ When a team is growing rapidly, you can find yourself in strange situations like: 50% of your team having joined in the past three months. By continuously sharing the Vision, Culture and Strategy, it's easier to get newcomers truly onboard with your startup's journey.

→ Coming back to these topics will never be off-putting to older employees: you can repeat them endlessly without a problem.

The Allies’ strategy (according to Fauvet, Herbemont and CĂ©sar):

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It is needed to identify early on the views of the various players of your company. This involves knowing who the allies/opponents are and how much energy they are willing to commit to the project.

Theses are the for subpart of your team:

Allies

→ Gold Triangles: They are the "engines" of your company. They are very involved but have enough hindsights to sugest improvements.

→ Advocates: They are very involved in the company but they lack critical thinking skills.

Indifferent

→ Grumpy: They are the passive ones who complain, they raise the tensions and alarm signals of the company.

→ Followers/Passive: They are often called 'the silent majority'. Their life is elsewhere.

Torn

→ Hesitants: They negotiate their involvement. Depending on the circumstances, they will support the project or not.

→ Torn: They are totally in favor of the project, but they don't think it's the right way to go.

Opponents

→ Critics: They are largely in disagreement with the project but they are sensitive to power relationship, unlike the rebellious who are insensitive to everything.

→ Rebellious: They would rather lose everything than give the project a chance.

If you follow this theory, as a Leader you should spend 2/3 of your time with the Gold Triangle. They are the ones that will win over the most of Indifferent, Grumpy, Hesitants,Torn.

In a way, it’s you creating a collaborative management that will save you time down the line. Your allies will take care of engaging the people in your team that can be a flight risk in a high scaling phase.

The 1/3 left of your time should be about the Critics and Rebellious. It’s the Leader’s job to go and talk to them in a directive way. If they don’t respond, you should not waste more time on them. Your allies would not understand why.

4. Steering of the strategy

2 operational and efficient methods for the management of execution.

a. Managing with OKRs

OKR methodology by FourWeekMBA:

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Best Practices for the Steering

  • The OKR Method is to be understood as a management system which allows to mobilize all the teams with coherence in the pursuit of ambitious objectives.
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Do not neglect / underestimate the implementation phase.
  • Start the reflections / implementation by the Leadership → facilitates the declination and alignment within the company "everywhere and for everyone".
  • Communicate: transparency is a fundamental part of the method.
  • Encourage initiatives and test & learn co-build, free up energies → team commitment never link OKR and direct evaluation of employees.
  • Develop the company's agility steering in short, paced cycles → positive tension / fluid arbitrations weekly follow-up meetings + monthly / quarterly steering committee and appoint a PMO.

Best Practices for setting your Objectives

  • Objective is in fact to be considered as an Ambition: Qualitative, Inspiring and Mobilizing (it gives meaning).
  • Objective must have a time frame to them.
  • Objective of different levels but still aligned:
    • Strategic level OKR → 3 to 5 years horizon
    • Tactical level OKR → 12 to 18 months horizon with possible declination:
      • Team / Department OKR → quarterly / semester follow-up
  • Appoint an Objective Owner.
  • Limit the number of Objectives to 3/4 per level.
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When writting your Objectives you are trying to answer the question “Where do we want to go?”. They should be: Short - Ambitious - Inspiring - Qualitative.

Best Practices for setting your Key Results

  • It must be expressed with an action verb.
  • It must be precise (target value) and measurable do not confuse KR and the means/actions to achieve it.
  • Number limit = 3 KRs per Objective
  • Appoint a KR Owner.
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When writting your KRs you are trying to answer the question “Where are we at now?”. Also, they cover the main dimensions of the Objective. They should be:
  • Measurable/Quantitative
  • With a real impact on the Objective.

→ Your Initiatives link to KRs are trying to answer the question “What should we do?”. They are an action, project, task to get to the KR.

Beginner's guide to OKR: Everything you need to know - Superbeings
Beginner's guide to OKR: Everything you need to know - Superbeings

Q&A about OKRs

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Can I tweak the OKRs as we see what works and what doesnt?
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Can I use OKRs to evaluate my employees?
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How many O and KRs should I put into place?
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What to do when a KR is not met?

To sum up, OKRs are first and foremost a Management System.

b. The 4DX methodology

The 4 Disciplines of Execution (4DX) are:

  1. Focus on key objectives: Wildly Important Goals.
  2. Act on the Lead measures
  3. Develop and follow an explicit scoreboard
  4. Steering with cadence and accountability
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Best Practices for Discipline 1: Focus on the Wildly Important Goal

  • Focus = maximum 2 to 3 WIGs at the same time / team.
  • Choose the most impactful WIGs for the company.
  • All WIGs must have a deadline.
  • All WIGs must be explicit (1 starting point, 1 end point, 1 time frame).
  • Encourage initiatives and variations of WIGs / team on the condition that it contributes to the global WIG.

Best Practices for Discipline 2: Act on the Lead Measures

  • Choose actions that are easy to measure
  • Action that have a direct influence on the achievement of the WIG
  • On which the team has a real impact
  • Which are not sub-WIGs!
  • Limited in number = 2 to 3 maximum

Example:

WIG
Lead
Gain 100 new customers before 31/12/2022
→ Get 20 leads/week → Make 5 firm offers/week

There is a causal relationship between the Lead and de WIG.

Best Practices for Discipline 3: Keep a Compelling Scoreboard

  • Clear, Simple, Readable.
  • Expressive = shows if the team is succeeding or not!
  • Presents both the WIG and Lead metrics
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Best Practices for Discipline 4: Create a Cadence of Accountability

  • This discipline determines the success or failure, "we play the game".
  • Hold a weekly meeting - unchanging - same day, same time.
  • Short meeting = 30 mn' isolated from the whirlwind of daily life (no mobile / no email).
  • Paced agenda and solely focused on the WIG:
    • Review of Lead measures and achievement of WIG goals;
    • Assessment of the points of attention, failures, successes, learning curve;
    • Realignment of priorities for the coming week for each team member.

Conclusion

These two methodologies are very similar in their approach but differ in what they entail.

→ OKRs are more structured and when implementing them it’s a real framework shift for the long term. Your company as a whole needs to change so that everybody speaks the same language. It’s designed for more mature organization with management layers that allows a smooth running and alignment within the different teams.

→ 4DX is more about setting and achieving your goals without a strategic layer to it. It’s the method to get things done. Very operational, this is more appropriate for early-stage companies.

Useful Resources

Other Visconti digests:

Food for thought in French:

Food for thought in English: