Performance Mismanagement

We’ve gotten overly accustomed to and enslaved by the unfair, illogical, and counterproductive notion that attaining results requires appraising people based on attaining results. It’s time to consider reconfiguring performance management around input, how one works, rather than output, what one produces—that is, judging people less on results and more on behaviors related to problem-solving, innovation, creativity, innovation, ethics, and other attributes. That means assessing salespeople not on whether they sold anything but on whether they exhibited skills and competencies and followed processes that normally lead to closing deals. It means evaluating your advertising team not on whether a client bought a campaign but on how your people went about creating it. It’s examining how your marketing manager launched a social-media initiative rather than page views garnered.