It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to do, leadership of any kind has to start with a clear objective, only then can you align tasks and activities to meet those goals.

From there you can do two vital things, communicate with clarity the expectations of everyone involved and build a metric and cadence to measure progress.

In the quest to understand performance it’s very easy to disappear down the rabbit hole of another measure and another measure and another measure. This only serves to confuse and can often cause conflicting aims.

Performance management is all about key interventions in a timely manner, when building measures think about the following…..

1- Are you measuring a result? - If so get rid, you cannot coach someone to a result, you can only coach based on what activities you ask of them.

2- Do those activities align to the objectives you have set? - If not get rid. Your metrics should directly relate to your objectives only, that’s clarity. Often BI can be hijacked by the aims of other stakeholders, be strong, keep your KPI’s short and clean.

3- Are these KPI’s clear and achievable in the real world? Bigger KPI’s do not necessarily lead to bigger results, there is a qualitative element as well as a quantitive. In a previous role for example we found that seller’s had a golden appointment range of 10-12 per week where they would convert best. Above 14 not only would they not convert more, conversion would actually suffer as each opportunity received less attention and care.

4- Can everyone involved buy in? Communication and understanding is vital here, without buy in from all it’s easy for the process to be derailed. Be aware that different people may need to be onboarded in different ways. Everyone needs to get the “A+B=C” of your plan.

5- Do you have an established coaching cadence? A forum and cadence for review and coaching needs to be set in stone, this needs to become part of what you do otherwise it risks becoming just another box ticking exercise. This can be weekly, monthly or even quarterly depending the rhythm of your operation but each review should always result in clear actions.