All leaders, Board Members, Executives right through to those managing their first team, have to manage for optimal performance and conformance outcomes.
With so much written about performance management at an individual, team and enterprise level it is easy to ignore conformance, or simply assume it is part of the same program of work, but is it really that simple?
In today’s post we’ll take a look a little more deeply at these two critical drivers.
Broadly conformance management refers to how organizations ensure team members, projects, and their deliverables conform with specific standards and requirements. These standards and requirements may be set down internally by the Board or Management, or be external or independent such as laws, regulations, industry standards and requirements of certification organizations.
Performance management, in an enterprise context, typically refers to the processes established to set goals, monitor achievement against those goals, providing feedback and corrective insights to those involved in the execution of those goals, and ultimately evaluating outcomes and deliverables.
Despite the clear and inextricable link between these two concepts the exploration, development and proliferation of models to optimize performance management has dominated both management research and practice.
But when we talk to our clients it is clear the best Boards, leaders and teams are managing both and we’ve captured some of their insights.
As a new team member starts, a new project is kicked off, or a new product or service launched, managing the first 100 days is critical.
Leadership needs to set up the person or project for success. Simple, clear, easily communicated and understood goals must be established at the outset that everyone involved knows completely ‘what will good look like’.
And across the same period leadership must establish, and monitor, outcomes (per above) and processes. Team members should know how the work should be done, what methodologies should be followed, and, critically, how the quality and conformance of their work will be assessed.
One powerful way we’ve seen these done is project teams being required to produce at least one artifact (a document, a video, a tutorial) that captures how they executed their work, how they managed a risk or threat, and what they learnt. These establish a clear requirement to both achieve good outcomes and follow conformance guidance.
Just as many organizations concentrate performance management responsibilities with top leadership and HR functions we hear the same for conformance management but this time it is the Board and Q&RM.
We see the best organizations ensuring both performance and conformance management is the responsibility of everyone, especially those in leadership positions.
Recognising those leaders making hard decisions, and demonstrating courage and conviction, to defend conformance standards is one powerful way organizations can support this.
Similarly, senior leaders creating a ‘safe space’ for their leaders to come forward and discuss performance and conformance challenges, even where those two drivers may apparently come into conflict, has been seen to drive stronger conformance outcomes.
Interestingly many of our clients tell us performance and conformance management are managed in very distinct platforms. This makes integrating insights, coordinating work effort and aligned teams across both dimensions can be overly challenging.
They tell us using a tool, like BoardPAC, that allows senior management to manage, review and assess work streams across performance and conformance spaces is invaluable.
If you’d like to learn more about BoardPAC
