How to Determine and Improve the Performance Gaps?

Human capital is a top priority in today’s global economy.

In fact many businesses are faced with the reality that they need to get more results through smaller and perhaps more fragmented teams. As your employees have added and shifted roles, positions, and responsibilities, how do you know you have the right people in the right positions in order to maximize your business efforts and outcomes?

The reality is, in some cases you do have the right team members in right places, and in some cases you probably guessed wrong, as we all have. Companies forced to reorganize made quick decisions resulting in people landing in the wrong roles.

Likewise, companies that have experienced intense growth have ended up with similar results. Diagnostic assessments can help you to determine performance gaps and help your company to effectively understand and align the talents, behaviors, and motivators of every employee. Having the right employee in the right position is as critical to the individual’s success as it is to the success of the company.

The first step in bridging performance gaps is for management to be committed to a people development process for employees. It should be based on the skills, attitudes, and behaviors necessary to do their jobs successfully. If the size of the organization is large enough it can be HR implemented, but the objectives and strategies of developing employees and how those employees are going to help drive results needs to be driven by management.

After the commitment is in place and the objectives have been identified, diagnostic assessments can help specifically and individually determine performance gaps, as developmental issues will be employee specific. Assessments can also be the secret tool for creating skill development as well attitudinal and behavioral improvement while eliminating resistance to change.

When working with clients, we focus diagnostically on the whole person as defined by these three key areas:

§  WHAT natural talents do your employees possess? How do they make decisions and interact with the world around them, as well as how do they perceive themselves?

§  WHY are your employees motivated to use their natural talents, based on their personal motivators and drivers? Everyone has their own unique mix of personal drivers and motivators that help guide them toward success. Understanding what really drives a person is a crucial part of success.

§  HOW do your employees prefer to use their natural talents, based on their preferred behavioral style? Since each individual has their own unique preferences and habits for how they like to behave, this understanding is crucial when working with team members, as a leader or manager, or in an environment that requires conflict resolution.

Establishing new behaviors requires the employee feel able to adopt the behavior and feel comfortable doing so. A well-designed people development process focused on objectives using diagnostic assessments drives long-term change. We consistently see 80-100% in adaptable change after the completion of a development process with sustainable results that remain a year later.

Left or Right?

What exactly do the modern-day knowledge workers do to achieve significant success? The results of a recent 7-year, 197,000-person, 23-country study by Innermetrix give us some of the answer. Simply put, the most successful people in the new economy recognize three core facts about themselves:

•   Their value to the organization has shifted from their physical ability to do, to their mental ability to think.

•   While they can change how they manually do things, they cannot change their natural thinking and decision-making styles.

•   Instead of fixing themselves to conform to the one best way, they make the role conform to their own best way.

The simple concept below illustrates how the most successful people in today’s economy think very differently about themselves and their path.

There are four universal steps that everyone goes through in any role:

•   Step 1 – Accept the role.

•   Step 2 – Get to know the role better and determine what that role really requires for success.

•   Step 3 – Inevitably, identify gaps between what the role requires and what you can provide (talents, knowledge, skills, etc.).

•   Step 4 – Attempt to close those gaps (either by changing yourself, or changing the role).

Step #4 is the crucial difference. It is where the difference between old and new beliefs lies. The old belief is that the role is fixed and to improve requires turning left to focus on fixing oneself (i.e. change your natural thinking style).

Today's successful revolutionists, however, do the exact opposite. They don’t assume they need to change themselves to better fit the role they have. Instead they turn right and focus on fixing the role to better fit them instead.

Will you turn left to try and modify yourself /

or will you turn right to modify the role?

•   Marshall Goldsmith, a famous executive coach and revolutionist, provides a great example of turning right, when he says, “I constantly try to refine the strengths I have, but that doesn’t mean I try to develop things I don’t already have. The key is to have your role depend primarily on what you already naturally do well.”

•   Famed management guru, Peter Drucker, used to counsel leaders to help their people turn right when he said, "Make your people's weaknesses irrelevant." He didn't say fix the person; he said change the role so the weakness doesn't matter because it isn't required.

Get the point?

So, the question to you is:

Do you want to spend your life trying to fix your weaknesses and fitting their one best way / or would you rather do it your way,

authentically, in your own best way, with passion, satisfaction, happiness and results that surprise you?

If you choose the latter route, it won’t happen by waiting for management to do it for you. Like all revolutions, this one must also take place in your mind and heart first. YOU have to create your own private revolution – because no one else is going to do it for you!

__________________________________

Surya M Ganduri, PhD. PMP. is the founder and president of eMBC, Inc., a national firm specializing in strategic and executive leadership development processes that Help People Succeed in an Evolving World. His company is affiliated with Resource Associates Corporation, a network of 600+ associates that are dedicated to helping organizations and individuals manage strategic change, innovation, cultural transition, and goal achievement. Surya has over 26 years of business experience in management consulting, leadership development, executive coaching, process improvements, organizational development and youth leadership. Contact Surya at s6ganduri@eMBCinc.com. For more information visit www.eMBCinc.com or contact eMBC, Inc., directly at (630) 445-1321.