Welcome to the ninth application lab in the [Re]Create Application Lab Collection. The lab includes a downloadable workbook (PDF), a video, and editable worksheets (PPTX).
Introduction
Leaders are in charge of the incentives in the organization, and thus get precisely the performance from the people they deserve. All too often, the incentive systems are counter-productive and drive behaviors that are inconsistent with the overall compelling directive, strategy, and desired culture.
Reinforcement and incentives come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and degrees of formality. The formal options for reinforcing the desired behaviors include recognition, rewards, promotions, and sometimes the removal of individuals. Incentives also include informal methods, such as the role model behavior of leaders and their daily reactions and feedback to employee conduct. Depending on the details of the situation, the spontaneous reactions of the leaders might be even more influential than the formal incentive systems. High-performing organizations align their incentives (structured and unstructured) to ensure the best system + people = performance.
Bottom line: If you want a different organization, you have to change how you recognize and reward the people. All of these approaches have to be aligned and consistent with each other and the overall strategy and desired culture. The Align, Coach, Appreciate process is designed to help leaders provide feedback that improves follower performance, engagement, and commitment.
Read Chapter 9, Align Coach Appreciate, in the [Re]Create Book.
Available on: Amazon | iBooks | Nook | Kobo | Audible (Audiobook)
Application
Objective – Understand the Align, Coach, and Appreciate concepts, components, and relationships and how they contribute to leadership and organization [re]design for sustainable excellence.
Do your people feel appreciated? Are your employee performance evaluations and incentives aligned with your strategy and culture? In this lesson, you will apply the key concepts of aligning, coaching and appreciating the workforce to your organization. Specifically, you will assess the alignment between your workforce performance evaluations, incentives, and strategy. Then, you will assess the alignment between the workforce performance evaluations and incentives with your organizational values. Finally, you will use the individual coaching framework to evaluate yourself and then a direct report.
Evaluations and Incentives Alignment with Strategy Video 0:52
Objective – Assess the alignment between your Workforce Evaluation and Incentives and your Strategy.
1. Strategic Goals
Identify the Strategic Goals using a code # (e.g., 1, 2, 3…).
2. Evaluations and Incentives
Identify each performance evaluation and incentive including annual performance reviews, salary increases, awards, bonuses, promotions, and so on. On a separate document identify the criteria used for each evaluation and incentive.
3. Assess Alignment
Assess the alignment of each evaluation and incentive criterion with each strategic goal. For example, you might assess the annual employee evaluation criteria with goal number one as being a good fit. In other words, there’s alignment between the yearly employee evaluation criteria and what goal number one is doing, so it supports it. However, you may find that the annual employee evaluation criteria are a loose fit or poor alignment with the goal when you look at goal number two. While it might be helpful and not harmful, it does not directly support the goal. When you look at goal number three, you may find that the employee evaluation criteria are the opposite. The criteria do not address goal number three at all. Consequently, if we improve the employee based on the evaluation criteria, it is not going to help goal number three.
Evaluations and Incentives Alignment with Values Video 4:00
Objective – Assess the alignment between your workforce evaluations and incentives and your organizational values.
1. Values
Identify your organization’s desired values across the top of the worksheet – one value for each column. If you run out of space, use a second worksheet. For our example, we will use the five values that showed up in the research for the [Re]Create book – employee focus, trust, teamwork, excellence, and customer focus. There is more discussion on these values in Culture Lab #12.
2. Evaluation and Incentives
Take that list that you just created for the previous worksheet (Framework 9-3) and copy and paste the evaluations and incentives to this worksheet. If you didn’t complete the 9-3 Worksheet then you will need to start from scratch and identify the organization’s evaluations and incentives.
3. Assess Alignment
Assess the alignment of each evaluation or incentive individually with each value. For example, the annual employee performance evaluation criteria might directly support the first value of employees and their development. However, there may be a loose fit with the value of trust and integrity, and it may not address the value of teamwork at all. Or worse, it may emphasize individual performance over team performance. Finally, the annual employee evaluation criteria might be aligned with and support the values of excellence and customer.
The second example, bonus criteria, may be based solely on a customer metric only and may not support teamwork, excellence, trust, or employees. Consequently, your employees may be making choices and decisions that are potentially unethical and could detract from the team’s overall performance and the overall performance of the larger organization.
In the third example, promotion criteria, we find that it does not address three of the five values. The problem with this is that we end up promoting people who do not embody the values and or who do not role model the organization’s values. When we say we value employees’ trust and teamwork, but then the people we’re promoting and bonusing do not exhibit those behaviors, many (maybe most) employees look at that and realize what is really important.
Individual Coaching Video 7:52
Objective – Apply the Individual Coaching Framework to yourself and then a direct report.
The individual coaching framework is a format that will help you make the alignment between strategy, culture, and individual action explicit. That will provide a tangible method to compare the desired actions with the activities the individual is doing.
1. Activities
Identify the duties, roles, responsibilities, and tasks the individual is responsible for during the year.
2. Align
Identify the strategic goals and values aligned with the roles, responsibilities, and tasks.
3. Assessment
Assess how well the individual did on each role, responsibility, and task.
4. Action?
Identify the next steps, including developmental activities, rewards, etc.
Worksheets
- Complete – Complete the worksheets by yourself or with your group.
- Review – Present and explain your worksheets to your colleagues and boss and get their feedback.
- Revise – Incorporate their feedback into your worksheets.
Conclusion
Organization systems without people do not exist. While it is easy to design a system that will result in bad performance and turnover, it is challenging to create a system that will result in engagement and high performance. With all systems, leadership is required to make them work. In this case, leaders must be willing and able to inspire, coach, and appreciate their people while role-modeling that behavior every day. Fortunately, or unfortunately, leaders get the performance from the workforce that they deserve. It is up to the leader to decide what they want and then do what is necessary.