Have You Defined Your Performance Principles?

Get your copy today
Available from Amazon and iTunes

When we experience the day to day frustrations of our team not working in the way that we want them to we have a few options:

We can shout at them and tell them that their work isn't good enough.
We can try and figure out why their work isn't good enough and try to help them improve.
We can articulate what good looks like and help share with them some principles we want them to work to.

The last point, sharing with them the principles of how you want your team to run, can be invaluable not just for your under-performing team members but for the wider business.

Let me give you an example.

I worked with a business that was struggling to keep up with their client projects. We looked at a number of their failings and came up with handful of 'performance principles' that included:

We don't do surprises - if something bad happens tell your team mates immediately and work on a plan together.
Walk don't run - if the pressure gets too much don't do the 'headless chicken' dance, slow down and think!
Preparation equals productivity - if you haven't prepared, don't start.

I'm sure that you get the gist. These were reminders of the way that we wanted to work and were written in a way that helped the team to periodically focus on how they wanted to act and behave so that they could adjust their management and leadership style for the deliver of their projects.

Performance principles are another way of sharing a standard with your team. If you do it right then you will be able to get the team involved with defining the standards and the principles and get even more buy in to this approach.

The business that I mentioned before came up with ten principles and they now regularly score themselves out of ten as to how many of the principles they are living and breathing. This is also one of the strategies that I share in my book Losing the Cape; it is a great way to help your business shift away from re-active firefighting and into proactive work on improving the performance of your business operations.

If you haven't defined and shared something like this with your team is today the day to put pen to paper?

Giles

About the author Giles Johnston is a Chartered Engineer who specialises in helping businesses to grow and improve through better business processes. Giles is also the author of Business Process Re-Engineering and creator of the 'Making It Happen' continuous improvement toolkit.

How to get started with continuous improvement

We all know that continuous improvement is a strategy that is essential for business. It involves constantly seeking ways to improve processes, products, or services in order to achieve better results and outcomes. However, for many people, the thought of starting on the path of continuous improvement can be daunting. The fear of doing it incorrectly or not knowing where to start can be overwhelming. The key to successful continuous improvement is to start small and gradually build upon your successes. Here are some tips to help you get started if you are unsure of how to begin: 1. Identify areas for improvement: The first step in continuous improvement is to identify the areas that need improvement. This can be done by looking at the processes, products, or services that are not performing as well as they could be. It is important to involve all stakeholders in this process to gain a comprehensive understanding of the areas that need attention. 2. Set specifi...

The Kaizen Checklist is here!

Do you want to get better results from your Kaizen programme? Improve your business results quickly with my downloadable kit (including guidebook, workbook and templates) for only $39. Are you looking for a sustainable way to identify and implement improvements across your business? Practical improvement strategies The Kaizen Checklist is a downloadable kit that you can use with your management team to develop a system that suits your business and allow you to quickly implement Kaizen effectively at your place of work. This works great if you use it as the centre piece of your own internal workshop. The kit includes a 40 page guidebook, a workbook, four appendices and three templates. All parts of this kit are designed to get you up and running as fast as possible. If you are unfamiliar with Kaizen, let me stress that this is a simple improvement philosophy that is so much more than just ‘a Japanese word for continuous improvement’. I’ll cover what it...

Nail the number one improvement project

Over the past few weeks I have intervened in my client's continuous improvement programmes . I did this for one good reason: They weren't getting results. They caught the improvement bug, like so many organisations do. They got caught in the trap of wanting to change everything now! As I said, this happens to most of us from time to time. You start with some small improvements and you then identify more improvements you could get your teeth into. The next thing you know, you are trying to run ten improvement projects as well as deliver your day job. I know from bitter experience that this usually leads to having lots of loose ends rather than tangible increases in performance. So, what can you do about this? I know that with careful experimenting and resource management, you could find your sweet spot and figure out how many projects you can handle at once. Or, you can take the quick route and pare back your list until you have one priority. The one project that will give you t...

Search This Blog