Archive for March, 2010

The Link Between Employee Performance And Organizational Results

The results that an organization achieves are directly correlated to individual employee performance.

When I share this truth, audiences will often say, “Of course!”  But when I ask them why we, in business, are preoccupied with:

• the quarterly number (results)
• the performance review (results)
• the quota report (results)

more than:

• the quality of the weekly report (performance)
• the way the employee led the meeting (performance)
• the number of sales calls this week (performance) 

they see this truth in a new light. 

Your Choice 

If you want to impact organizational results in your company, you can do one of two things:

• Wait for the the results to be reported and then yell and scream about the lack of results.  You may feel like that’s your job, however, that won’t change the results at all.  And further, no amount of yelling, meetings or memos will change the results.  Only White Out or typing over the cell formula can change the results directly…and that’s a recipe to get fired or, in a public company, be sentenced to serve jail time at a white collar country club with a large severance package.
• The more effective way to improve organizational results is to improve individual employee performance.  It’s more work than just yelling about the results, but improving individual employee performance across the organization is the most direct way to improve organizational results. 

The truth is that high performing employees will deliver high performing organizational results.  Is your company leadership focused on the results or the performance that determines the results?

For more information on how to improve employee performance, see our recent post 3 Steps To Get More ROI From Your Employees.

Closing The Gap

As a company, our mission is to help companies like yours close the gap between the results that leaders want to achieve and the ability of their organizations to deliver those results.  Why is there a gap?  Here are three reasons:

• Organizational structure issues such as inefficient processes, outdated ways of organizing the work and bloated bureaucracy get in the way of delivering results.
• Organizational behavior issues, based on patterns of predictable human behavior, such as individual goals not aligned with organizational goals, one or more employees not in positions where they are using their strengths and ineffective leadership that drains motivation and initiative, which thwart even the best of efforts to achieve goals.
• A lack of focus on results.  Many companies generate good ideas and enthusiasm initially, but fail to execute on those ideas because they find out that the work involved in getting an idea implemented is harder than initially anticipated or employees believe the idea is always someone else’s to work on or they get distracted on other initiatives.

As the business leader, focus your energy on fixing these issues in your organization and your organization’s ability to deliver results will improve dramatically.

For more insights on improving organizational performance, click here to access our other free resources.