Every parent knows what it’s like to pour a glass of milk for their child and turn their back only to find that the child has spilled their milk all over the floor a moment later. Getting mad and raising your voice may not be the most productive reaction in the world, but it can easily be your first, most instinctive response. The problem is, reacting emotionally and providing a reprimand is a sure-fire way not to solve future problems. Instead, as every parent knows, you need to take your time and focus the child on holding the glass properly so that he or she can learn how to have a more successful milk drinking experience next time. It’s not rocket science, but it is counter-intuitive. Rather than punish past misdeeds, the parent tries to teach the right behavior – sometimes over and over again.
In the corporate world we tend to deal with spilt milk the old fashioned way. We call it the annual review process. Your manager sits you down across the table and lists all the things he caught you doing wrong in the past twelve months, describing every expectation you failed to meet. It’s supposed to be a helpful way to deal with performance issues. Any employee who clearly understands how he failed in the past, will surely never repeat those mistakes in the future. No doubt, future performance will achieve higher levels as a result.
Does it really work like that? Of course, not. At best, the manager feels relieved that he has finally cleared the air while the employee feels as though he has escaped relatively unscathed. More likely, the manager feels as though he has complicated or even damaged a working relationship, while the employee feels beaten up and unsupported.
The way performance appraisals are conducted suffuses the experience with defeatism and creates an excuse mentality. We learn that success equals operating mistake free, not achieving results through appropriate behaviors. We strive for performance levels that warrant a passing grade, without taking the risks to learn new things and go beyond expectations.
To correct this inbalance, some organizations have installed multi-source assessment. In this way, key figures around the employee have a chance to make suggestions for improvement. While this works well in theory, many organizations have corrupted the process. They let managers see the results, which causes participants to hold back. Or they incorporate the data back into performance reviews or even the succession planning strategy and compensation considerations. The organization suffers as a result, its people once again focused on maintaining the status quo instead of growing and developing as the business demands.
Looking for a better way? It all comes back to the child and the spilled milk. Performance is a function of its consequences. Since the milk has spilled, the performance was bad. But what should you do about that? Most of us, especially in the work place, have limited energy to deal with spilt milk in the feedback process. The past can’t be changed, only the future is available for improvement. Accordingly, we should turn away from fixing past mistakes and focus on improving future behaviors.
Marshall Goldsmith, a leading executive coach, calls this approach Feed Forward, to distinguish it from traditional feedback. Feed forward requires that a manager engage his employee in a conversation about the future. The focus of the conversation is on a limited number of behaviors required in the coming months or year to achieve specific business results. Since business needs are always changing, those behaviors may in fact be entirely different than the ones that “needed correcting” in the old performance review – still one more reason why the past is less helpful than we think.
The important thing in the feed forward process is to properly integrate our need for business results with our need for behavior change. When we manage both at the same time, one of them suffers. In fact, we need to separate the setting of business objectives from the coaching of behavioral objectives. Although, they are intrinsically linked, they are also completely different issues with correspondingly different activities. It may be a chicken and the egg argument, but without one we certainly don’t produce the other.
An integrated, forward looking approach changes the dynamic of the performance improvement process. In order to make that process successful, a few steps should be in place. First, we need to define which behaviors are required for future success and focus on those, not necessarily the ones that scored lowest and called out for “correction.” Second, we need to determine what the consequences are for successfully and frequently demonstrating those required behaviors in the workplace. Third, we need to understand, from the employee’s perspective, the driving and restraining forces at work – and begin a coaching process focused on the individual’s genuine needs.
As chicken follows egg and round again, so the success of the business will follow the forward looking feedback approach.
David Cohen is president of Strategic Action Group, and author of “Inside the Box: Leading with Corporate Values to Drive Sustained Business Success”.
