It’s Time to Fine-Tune Performance Management

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2022

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Measuring a broad set of standards across the organization seems like a fair way to judge employees’ performance year over year. But Heidi Gardner, distinguished fellow at Harvard Law School, says performance management systems often incentivize employees to scramble to hit their numbers and lose sight of the organizations’ bigger objectives. To boost collaboration and long-term customer value, Gardner shares a four-part scorecard that establishes shared organizational goals while also holding employees accountable for individual results. With Ivan Matviak of Clearwater Analytics, Gardner wrote the HBR article “Performance Management Shouldn’t Kill Collaboration.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	So you got the job. Now what? Join me, Eleni Mata, on HBR's new original podcast, New
0:08.1	Here, the Young Professionals Guide to Work, and how to make it work for you. Listen for
0:13.8	free wherever you get your podcasts. Just search New Here. See you there!
0:30.0	Welcome to the HBR ID Acast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Kurt Nickish. Technology now
0:50.0	allows businesses to project, estimate, measure, and report on all kinds of business functions,
0:56.6	and they use it heavily in performance management. It seems like a good idea, set a broad set
1:02.0	of standards across the organization, measure those, and you'll have a fair way to judge
1:06.9	employees' work and improvement year over year. Of course, that's easier said than done.
1:12.5	And today's guest says that many companies are using rubrics that take an overly narrow
1:17.5	and short-term view, and that one major downside of this is, they kill collaboration.
1:23.8	Heidi Gardner is a distinguished fellow at Harvard Law School, and she co-wrote along
1:28.6	with Ivan Matviak of Clearwater Analytics. The HBR article, performance management shouldn't
1:35.1	kill collaboration. Hi Heidi, thanks for coming on the show. Hi, thanks for having me.
1:42.8	So first just to get some definitions out of the way, we're talking here about individual
1:47.7	performance management, but trying to make it a line and reflect business level goals
1:53.6	is that right? What we're talking about is really trying to figure out how you measure individual
1:59.2	people in a way that they are focused on accomplishing what matters to their organization, say their
2:05.4	company, and what matters to their company ultimately should be things like customer satisfaction.
2:11.8	And right now, what we find is so many companies are focused on individual metrics that just
2:17.2	focus people on what's right in front of their nose, and sometimes that runs counter to
2:22.2	what's good for the company or good for the customers. But what's right in front of their
2:26.0	nose should be what's good for the company and for customers, right? So right now, what we
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