Competencies and Organizational Performance

Recently I had to initiate the annual appraisal cycle in the company I work for. It was quite challenging, mainly because the system was not believed to be fair and we were running against the time, without a proper organizational plan in place (Balanced Scorecard) and with the responsibility of delivering workshops on goal setting to the whole company (500 employees).

Once workshops were done but goals not properly set and I had time to breathe in some knowledge, I stopped by a famous book store (Livraria Cultura) at Paulista Avenue and bought a great book that I recommend for the ones who want to understand more on what is organizational performance, how competencies are linked to that and how is it connected to the Balanced Scorecard Strategic Planning. The book is called "Competencias & Desempenho Organizacional - O que ha alem do Balanced Scorecard" (Competencies & Organizational Performance - what exists beyond the Balanced Scorecard).


By reading it, some insights have already sinked in:

1) Results are multiple as they are related to different stakeholders: communities, clients, employees, government, owners, suppliers,...expect different results from the organization. Also, success is not only about financial gains, success is in the eyes of who sees it...

2) The development of individual and organizational competencies are the "roots" for the performance of an organization.

3) Performance exists as a consequence of a strategy and should be measured upon actions taken to see whether they are correct (means result achieved) or should be reviewed. It is not the system that leads to performance but the quality of the strategy and the capacity of the organization to implement it.

4) Strategy can be oriented towards: operational excellence, product innovation or/and service orientation.

5) Performance assessment programs should be linked to programs for retention of key resources and high performers.

6) The strategic planning should be communicated to the employees.

Thats it for now! New insights to come while I keep on reading... =)

Alain de Botton: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success

Alain de Botton addresses our common assumptions on success in our career in an innovative and brilliant way. Please check it out on TED:

Alain de Botton: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success | Video on TED.com

Peter Senge and The Learning Organization

According to Peter Senge, author of the concept of the learning organizations, currently few of the traditional organizations live even half as long as a person - most die before the age of forty. The reason lies in their capacity (or would it be lack of capacity?) to learn. What "learning" really means in the organizational context? How to objectivelly build the necessary competences and orientation into the organizations?

In his work, Peter Senge also addresses how visions work. He believes nothing motivates change more powerfully than a clear vision. In fact the vision of the "Learning organizations" is that of...

...organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.

The basic rationale for such organizations is that in situations of rapid change only those that are flexible, adaptive and productive will excel. For this to happen, it is argued, organizations need to ‘discover how to tap people’s commitment and capacity to learn at all levels’.

When you ask people about what it is like being part of a great team, what is most striking is the meaningfulness of the experience. People talk about being part of something larger than themselves, of being connected, of being generative. It become quite clear that, for many, their experiences as part of truly great teams stand out as singular periods of life lived to the fullest. Some spend the rest of their lives looking for ways to recapture that spirit. (Peter Senge, the fifth discipline).

But what is learning?

As per Senge, learning concerns the enhancement of the capacity to create. It occurs when people are trying to do something that they want to do. Why do children learn to walk? Because they want to. It is our intrinsic drive to create something new or do something we have never done before that leads to learning. It is always related to doing something.

According to John Dewey,one of the most influential thinkers on education in the twentieth century, "All learning is a continual process of discovering insights, inventing new possibilities for action, producing the actions, and observing the consequences leading to insights."

The dimension that distinguishes learning from more traditional organizations is the mastery of certain basic disciplines or ‘component technologies’. The five that Peter Senge identifies are said to be converging to innovate learning organizations. They are:

Systems thinking

Personal mastery

Mental models

Building shared vision

Team learning

He adds to this recognition that people are agents, able to act upon the structures and systems of which they are a part. All the disciplines are, in this way, ‘concerned with a shift of mind from seeing parts to seeing wholes, from seeing people as helpless reactors to seeing them as active participants in shaping their reality, from reacting to the present to creating the future’.

How to build a high performing top team?

Mckinsey & Company has launched a recent study on how a top team should perform in our organizations. The core idea is that if a top team fails to function, it can paralyze the whole company. On the other side, if it succeeds, the influence can impact from client satisfaction to worker productivity.

As per the article, these are the tips to get it done:

1)Get the right people on the team…and the wrong ones off: “right people in the right place” rules this tip. Most CEOs regret not employing this lever early enough and end up compromising the performance of the whole organization. Making it happen requires understanding which are the contributions that the team as a whole and each individual needs to make, so that the organization’s performance aspirations can be achieved. It also requires courage from the CEO to take the lead and keep the right team at the top.

2)Make sure the top team does just the work only it can do: what´s the percentage of time CEOs spend on strategy and people? What are they looking at? It seems they are looking at everything else without distinguishing among what they take care, what they should merely track and what should be delegated. Set priorities.

3)Address team dynamics and processes: how to foster productive collaboration instead of leading mistrust among different teams?

“The top team at a large mining company formed two camps with opposing views on how to address an important strategic challenge. The discussions on this topic hijacked the team’s agenda for an extended period, yet no decisions were made.” (Mckinsey Quarterly, 2011).

How to address team dynamics: work with the team to develop a common vision + objective understanding of why the teams are not collaborating

Summarizing:

• Each top team is unique and poses different challenges to the CEO
• CEOs must work on diagnosis and on the ground floor so that the board is aligned to achieve its strategic goals and teams are focused on the right topics.