Essentials of Performance Mgt Covered at ALFA Getting the Monkey Off Your Back

Don't Let the Monkeys Keep You Hostage

Beth Burbage, VIce President of Organizational Development for Silverado Senior Living, presented a session at the Assisted Living Federation of America (ALFA) on Performance Management. It was informative and a great reminder of the importance of some basic principles that if followed routinely can bring out the best in your staff and also relieve the stress of leaders.

"We all have a common goal and that is to provide awesome resident care and you do that one associate at a time," she began. She shared eight tips. Here is a taste.

Create Your Daily Plan

Pick 2-3 things you need to do. Determine what others can do for you.

Delegate

If you don't delegate, you have will over-worked and over-stressed leaders. If you don't delegate, staff will feel like you do not trust them and they will start acting that way. By delegating, you develop your people and also find new solutions for problems. "Successful managers always delegate," Burbage said.

Make Good Assignments

Some tasks you could delegate include:

• Minor and repetitive tasks
• Tasks you are expert in and that others should learn
• Tasks you dislike, provides someone else likes them
• Tasks that add variety and interest to another person's role
• Tasks that will increase the number of people who can perform critical assignments

Let People Do Their Job

If not, as she said, they will not feel trusted and fear will breed in the organization.

Hold People Accountable

After all, delegation is useless if you assume it's getting done but it's not.

Monkey Management

What is this you might ask? Well staff may try to come in and put the monkey that is on their shoulder on yours. You have to empower your people to come to you with solutions. Let them leave your office with the monkey still on their shoulder. Or else you will acquire a lot of monkeys.

Clarify the Assignment and Make Sure They Can Execute

Make sure you have explained the task. Make sure staff have had enough training.

Reward and Recognition

Determine what motivates individual associates and reward accordingly. Do it regularly both formally and informally. I would add read Daniel Pink's book Drive to understand this issue better.

While I think all of the above are key ingredients to successful performance management, two critical steps before this are missing. They are what Tom Voccola of CEO2 calls Synchronization and Trust.

In Synchronization, the CEO gets in sync with her/himself and her/his vision for the organization. Once the CEO has articulated a compelling Passion Statement for the organization then the entire organization becomes synchronized to it. Some would argue these already exist in many healthcare organizations. Have you read healthcare mission and vision statements lately? I defy you to find one that is different among 6,000 hospitals and 36,000 SNF and AL providers.

The key here is aligning individual passion and purpose to the organization. After Peter Sheahan's keynote at ALFA on the second day, the hallways were abuzz with organizations talking about how they have to change and develop a new vision for the future. That can only come if you ignite, discover or rediscover passion and purpose in healthcare.

The next step is Trust. Without trust, relationships are broken and creativity stifled. With trust, relationships are unlimited and the full potential of the human spirit is unleashed. You establish trust by moving the entire organization through the purpose and passion process. Your people experience firsthand how Trust feels, how to create Trust across and within departments and functions, build and nurture strong relationships at all levels, and sustain a culture of Trust going forward.

That sets the stage for anything else that follows. Problems look entirely different because the people looking at them have been transformed.

The next piece I would add is that people are still talking about getting the right people on the bus. Voccola believes that is a tired analogy. His metaphor of choice for extraordinary enterprises is a Sleek, Futuristic Starship.

Here's the meaning we see behind the bus metaphor:

• There's only one driver
• Everybody else is just a passenger
• Driver creates a command and control environment
• The driver doubles as navigator, with only the most basic navigational gauges
• The bus travels predictable roads, making predetermined stops
• If the driver's lost, everyone's lost
• Driver turns a blind eye to back-of-the-bus behavior
• Passengers are anonymous - regularly picked up and dropped off
• Passengers have to find their own way to an open seat
• Passengers are expected to passively sit through the ride
• Passengers have a limited, individual viewpoint
• Idle passengers are prone to complaining
• Driver and passengers react to external circumstances
• The bus runs on fossil fuels, requiring frequent pit stops
• Somebody's routinely thrown under it

Here's the starship meaning:

• Shared leadership
• Staffed by the Crew
• Support and empower environment
• Celebrated crew members beamed aboard for long-term voyages
• Crew is custom-stationed by purpose and passion
• Engaged crew is expected to stand, move around, actively participating
• Multiple navigators use multiple state-of-the-art navigational devices
• Everybody's responsible for helping the ship stay on course
• Everyone has access to the expansive shared viewpoint of the bridge
• Crew creates and reacts from inner resources
• Charts its own unique course
• Renewable energy source that is self-sustaining
• Transparency means there's no place to hide
• Open environment encourages innovation
• Teams routinely transported to new opportunities

What would you like to be on to move your organization forward?

Learn more ~ or join the conversation!

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@Gravity Giant Productions