If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It Tweet this
One of the biggest challenges that organisations face today is that a high percentage of employees leave because of their managers, either directly or indirectly. How many times have you heard that ‘People Don’t Leave Companies …They Leave Leaders’! We have spoken to enough Managers and I can say this with a lot of confidence that no one wants to be a bad Manager. So here’s what’s funny. Employee’s leave because of Mangers and no one wants to be a bad Manager!!
The problem really is that managers are not effectively coached to be able to handle adverse situations and most often pass the monkey onto someone else’s back. For eg. When an employee approaches the Manager stating that they are unhappy with their salary increment, their response most often would be this is a HR/ Organisation policy or blame it on the bell curve. Employees are now even more upset and lose faith not only in the Manager but also the Organisation.
Managers today do not have any idea of how they are faring; if they did I am sure they would have taken measures to improve themselves. Managers like everyone else need direction. Organisations need to look at means and ways to equip their Managers to become better Managers.
The Manager Score card is a self assessment tool that gives a comprehensive analysis of the Managers performance as rated by his team members. A survey is conducted with the team members to understand the Managers performance against key areas such as giving feedback, being supportive, dependability, leadership skills, communication etc
It allows the Manager to know his strengths/areas of improvement and implement corrective actions. The score card also provides adequate insight into the exact areas of focus and strengths for the manager to work on
The manager score card provides comparisons with peers and other managers within the organization and hence is a very effective self improvement tool. Having a score and knowing how others in the peer group are faring can be very effective especially when trying to set a personal goal and encourages competitiveness among managers
Since all Managers are being measured consistently and continuously it can be a very effective assessment tool to evaluate managers for additional responsibilities/ promotions. The trends can also be a very good input for the annual performance management system. The process thus builds a system of trust, continuous improvement and healthy competition.
While performance appraisals for employees are all too common, the reverse feedback mechanism , where an employee can provide an honest review to his manager aren’t. I am not sure why managers would not want the employees telling them what they are doing well and how they can improve their managerial style to help support their team better. The annual tradition of performance reviews may be of great use to the individual concerned, giving them a yardstick to measure their accomplishment and set them on right trajectory for the future. The same holds true for managers. In fact managers are in an enviable position. Why not make the most out of it?
If an organization truly wants to have a better internal communication, leading to a stronger team that provides improved external deliverables, it is critical that the Manager Scorecards are used. It is a powerful tool that can go a long way in establishing trust.
