A lot of companies love to water dead plants.
Not literally (though they probably do have a potted plant or two that’s been drowned in coffee from people who think they’re doing a service). But walk through enough offices, and you'll find leaders tending to something that stopped growing a long time ago – a process, a system, a way of doing things – because they built it, put energy into it, and can't quite bring themselves to admit it's gone. It's hard to let go of something you were responsible for that once worked, but now doesn’t.
Performance management often follows the same pattern. Many organizations continue to rely on approaches that once served them well but now haven't for quite some time. There’s no indication that these processes are functioning as anything other than a placeholder for something they used to be. And still, leaders keep pouring time, energy, and people-power into them.
Many organizations have just wrapped up their performance process. They're now facing the prospect of reconstituting that same old, lifeless process for another year.
Here's what a performance management process with no signs of life looks like:
By the time managers are finally fed up and ready to address low performance, previous review ratings are average, and there's no documented pattern of behavior, conversation, or attempted course correction.
The administrative load of review cycles is so intensive that managers do their very best just to get them completed. As a result, reviews often aren't truly reflective of actual performance.
During review conversations, managers lead and do most of the talking, often resulting in head nods and very little disagreement or conflict. There's nothing to indicate that employees truly understand, own, or are committed to the expectations being discussed.
Performance review data is used to inform other talent processes, like succession planning and engagement, but the inputs themselves are often questionable. In turn, the data informing some of your other programs may be incomplete or just plain wrong.
This can be an indicator that the system itself is broken, or that the culture won't support a truly functioning one without additional training and development.
These systems aren't actually helping people improve. They support monitoring and control, not growing people or performance.
If any of this sounds familiar, the question worth asking is: how much longer do you want to stay in this cycle?
Organizations can begin growing and watering a better process, one that actually works today. Instead of carrying the same dead process into another year, they can build something alive, effective, and worth the effort already being put into it. Imagine reaching the next review cycle with time, energy, and people-power going directly toward the outcomes you actually want to see, not toward keeping Frankenstein alive.
Not sure how your current performance management system is holding up?
Take our free assessment to evaluate your process and understand where to focus your attention for the rest of the year.
