Organizational Performance: The C.A.R.E. Model
Every organization and individual needs a foundation to enable both personal and organizational engagement. A foundation that leads to accelerated business results. The C.A.R.E Model provides this.
Related Fun Fact of the Week:
After the turn of the 20th century, concrete began to be used as cast-in-place, poured concrete foundations. The earliest versions were pictured in Gustav Stickley’s “More Craftsman Homes” catalog starting in 1912. These early versions were constructed by digging the foundation trench, pouring a concrete footing and embedding steel reinforcement rods (rebar) into the footing.
A strong foundation is the key to a well-built home. Such is the case in personal and organizational engagement as well!
Every organization and individual needs a foundation to enable both personal and organizational engagement. A foundation that leads to accelerated business results. C.A.R.E provides and ensures organizational clarity and alignment, while properly allocating the right resources in the right place at the right time. It then enables actions and behaviors to deliver, and more importantly, sustain top-tier performance while enhancing engagement and commitment. Watch this short video to learn more about the C.A.R.E model for accelerated performance.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
At Cornerstone Learning our focus is working with individuals and organizations to enhance organizational and individual engagement by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-engaged, leader supported, and organization enabled performance environments. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as performance advising, organizational surveys, online training, and performance assessments. Our purpose is simple, to enable your success.
Team Performance: The Engagement Team Lifecycle
With the future of performance being a network of engagement and performance teams that form, perform and reform as needed to deliver results, it is key to have a model that provides a framework for team success from inception to disbanding.
Related Fun Fact of the Week:
The Replacements is a film from 2000 by Warner Bros. starring Keanu Reeves. The movie is about a team of misfits coming together during an NFL strike, overcoming obstacles and learning to play as one.
We can all learn a lesson in teamwork from Shane Falco and the replacements.
If you want better employee engagement, what a better way than to engage your employees. And with the future of performance being a network of engagement and performance teams that form, perform and reform as needed to deliver results, it is key to have a model that provides a framework for team success from inception to disbanding. The video below highlights the Engagement Team Life Cycle. It is a predicable team cycle that once understood can be accelerated and leveraged to provide focus and deliver next level team success.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in developing a dynamic and customized blue print to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
Personal Performance: Leading it in a Lagging Performance Management Environment
It is well known that most performance management processes being used today actually promote and measure lagging performance. However, even working in a performance process that might be lagging in nature you can lead your personal performance by doing these “lead where you are” activities.
Related Fun Fact of the Week:
Peter Drucker first used the term "management by objectives" in his 1954 book The Practice of Management. While the basic ideas of MBO were not original to Drucker, they pulled from other management practices to create a complete “system”. The idea draws on the many ideas presented in Mary Parker Follett's 1926 essay, "The Giving of Orders".
These were the origins of today’s performance management processes.
It is well known that most performance management processes being used today actually promote and measure lagging performance. Goals and expectations are set at such a high level that by the time they get cascaded to the front line it has been days or weeks and with job-specific clarity lacking or non-existent. Then the measures of that performance are “reviewed” either annually or semi-annually where little can be done to accelerate performance or intervene until it is too late to have any meaningful near-term impact. It is almost a setup for failure in today’s constantly changing business environment where these goals are always a moving target throughout the year and can be completely irrelevant by the time they are actually discussed.
However, even working in a performance process that might be lagging in nature, you can lead your personal performance by doing these “lead where you are” activities:
Proactively set expectations with your manager. Don’t wait for leadership to set them for you. Take the initiative and set time on their calendar to outline expectations with them. Set what your manager can expect from you as it relates to your daily performance activities, team contributions, personal behaviors, et cetera, that will enable positive and sustainable performance results no matter what the specific goals might end up being as they get cascaded to you.
Set 20-30 minutes every 3-4 weeks with your manager to proactively lead the discussion on your performance results and how well you are delivering on the expectations you set. Highlight your areas of success and have a plan for closing any gaps that might exist.
Create or update a personal learning plan that specifically enhances your eligibility (technical, competencies), suitability (personal behaviors), and your viability (personal and team impact). Gain continuous performance feedback from others on your areas of strength to leverage and areas for development. Talk through your growth progress during your regular performance connection meeting with your manager each month.
To lead your performance, control what you can, and as a result, begin to influence what you can’t control by your performance success. Don’t let lagging performance management processes hold you back from leading your own performance.
For free engagement and performance resources head over to our Resource Vault!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in developing a dynamic and customized blue print to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
A Lead Where You Are Mindset: Having the "Crucial Conversation"
The responsibility for owning performance and changing performance is with each one of us, not our manager. If we don’t want to be managed then we must proactively lead our personal performance and set our leader up to support us, not manage us.
Related Fun Fact of the Week:
Benedict Cumberbatch had to memorize 1,480 lines as the leading performer in the 2015 National Theatre Live release of Hamlet. A truly stunning feat of leading his own performance.
For the last 25 years managers have been trained and coached on having those “difficult discussions” or “crucial conversations” when their employees’ performance is not meeting expectations.
However, as we evolve the performance model to employee-engaged and leader supported the responsibility for owning performance and changing performance is with each one of us, not our manager. If we don’t want to be managed then we must proactively lead our personal performance and set our leader up to support us, not manage us. Everyone should have the tools, training and capability to lead a crucial conversation when our performance is truly lacking, or if you sense it is perceived as lacking. We ourselves should own it and proactively begin the process to resolve it.
Waiting for you manager to have that difficult discussion with you (and we know at some point it is coming) wastes valuable time needed to resolve the issues and get back on track to top-tier performance. At some point it will happen to all of us, our performance will slip, and when it does our ability to personally acknowledge it, take responsibility for changing it, avoid becoming defensive because of it, and quickly act to change your performance trajectory is critical.
Leading performance is not just leading when our performance is outstanding, true personal leadership is shown when we proactively have those difficult discussions or that crucial conversations with our leader when we are falling short. Lead all your performance, not just good performance.
Want to learn more about leading your own performance? Contact us or take a look at our Lead Where You Are online training package.
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
Relics of Bygone Eras - The "Rank and Yank"
Related Fun Fact of the Week: Real Vaudeville shows would “Drop the Cow” on bad or overly long acts with "the hook", a shepherd's crook extended from offstage to pull away the performer. Oftentimes by the neck. Though he didn't originate it, the hook is forever associated with Howard "Sandman" Sims, a tap dancer who would use the hook on bad acts at the Apollo Theatre.
Talk about getting yanked! Ouch!
The pace of change is rapid. In fact, everywhere you turn the landscape of organizational performance is littered with relics of bygone eras. Last week we talked about our first organizational relic from the past…”climbing the corporate ladder”. As we discussed, climbing the corporate ladder is now being replaced by leveraging agile, individual and team performance networks that match unique talent to unique organization opportunity.
Our next left over symbol of a past performance bygone era is the use of “forced” or “bell curve” performance ranking systems, commonly referred to by the employees as “rank and yank”. This rating practice was championed by Jack Welch, CEO of GE and gained popularity with management throughout the 80’s. (Trust us, It was never popular in the employee population).
The practice of using a bell curve or a forced distribution to rank employees invariably kills morale, pits employees against each other creating unnecessary and unhealthy competition, and wastes thousands of hours with managers and HR professionals sitting in “collaboration meetings” fighting for their people. Even though GE and many other high profile organizations have stop using this method, many organizations still subscribe to what, hopefully soon, will be a long forgotten, ineffective, organizational practice.
With the evolution going on in organizational performance and the every increasing need to attract, develop, and cultivate specialized talent and skills, it important to replace “rank and yank” with continuous performance pursuit conversations and a “lead where you are” performance environment. The onus of performance accountability shifts from a leader reviewing and force ranking performance, to both the leader and employee pursuing performance with the employee continually owning and proactively reviewing their ongoing performance activities and results each month.
Organizations that have replaced this performance management relic in favor of continuous performance pursuit have seen tremendous improvements in both employee engagement and performance results.
It is time to make “rank and yank” a historical footnote in our organizations and business schools.
Want to know more on leading where you are? Contact us or take a look at our Lead Where You Are online training package, complete with online courses, guidebooks and other resources.
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.
Relics of Bygone Eras - The Corporate Ladder
Related Fun Fact of the Week: The longest wooden ladder in the world measures 135 ft long. It was made by the Handwerks Museum, St. Leonhard, Austria and completed in April 2005. The ladder has 120 rungs.
What a ladder to climb!
For over 50 years, the term “climbing the corporate ladder” was often a definition of success. The idea of starting at the very bottom and working your way to President or CEO seemed to be the the ultimate working dream.
But, “climbing the corporate ladder” is no longer seen as a path to success, just a symbol of past, ineffective, highly political performance models that often would define the most “qualified” as having the most organizational tenure or time in a position. Or even who you know that might assist you in skipping a few rungs on that ladder.
Thankfully, organizations are rapidly evolving from archaic “corporate ladders” to agile “performance networks” that identify and leverage unique talents and experiences and matches that talent to unique current and future performance opportunities.
Positioning yourself for this evolution of performance requires knowing, cultivating and leveraging your unique talents. Developing the capability and capacity to lead where you are, no matter where you are. This means leading your personal performance, not waiting to have your performance managed or reviewed. Leading change, not waiting for change to happen or letting the status quo consume your performance environment. Being accountable, even when others aren’t. Creating and sustaining authentic relationships, moving past just the communicating and truly connecting with others. And working with purpose and conviction, coming into work each day with a plan and attitude to help others be the best they can be by being the best you can be.
By leading where you are and intentionally developing the unique leader and talents within yourself, you define and cultivate your own future and you don’t let symbols from the past define your path to success.
Want to know more on leading where you are? Contact us or take a look at our Lead Where You Are online training package, complete with online courses, guidebooks and other resources.
For more information on how to more actively engage in your organization join our DESTINATION: SUCCESS page, or contact us!
Cornerstone Learning is a performance and leadership consulting organization that has worked with clients all over the world. Our focus is working with individuals and organizations to create performance solutions that deliver top-tier results by inspiring, enabling, and developing employee-led, leader supported, and organization enabled performance. We are able to successfully deliver this through multiple products and services such as employee surveys, online training, performance assessments, and performance coaching. The goal at Cornerstone Learning is to assist our clients in enabling success by developing a dynamic and customized pathway to deliver role model organizational and personal performance.