Tying Employee Performance to the Strategic Plan (Part 1)

November 26, 2013 Strategic Planning Comments Off on Tying Employee Performance to the Strategic Plan (Part 1)

For the past several months we have been looking at building a great team of employees and how important it is that your team understands your Strategic Plan and your Vision.  Now let’s turn our focus to the performance of this great team of people and how their performance impacts the success of your Strategic Plan.

We continuously discuss the importance of the Strategic Plan on the successful operation of a business and we have looked at how important it is to recruit, train and mentor people for your team.  We have stated that your Strategic Plan provides the road map for your business and you have to have people that can follow this road map.  What we want to start considering now is results.  We believe results are what counts and without establishing goals and objectives you will not be able to measure results.

We are firm believers in clearly communicating expectations and holding people accountable for these expectations.  Often we find that business owners and senior managers do not know how to do this or are doing a poor job.  We find that they are busy and believe they have hired good people and expect these people to do the job they were hired to do.  But business and management is not this simple.  If it was, the bookshelves would not be full of “How To” books on all types of related subjects.

As we have stated in the past, you separate the doers from the non-doers when it comes to implementation.  Does the implementation of your Strategic Plan separate you from your competition? At Strategen, we firmly believe that the missing link in Strategic Planning is “implementation of the plan” as it specifically relates to your people.  A key component of the implementation process is measuring results to develop an understanding of the actions and adjustments required to be successful.  With this in mind we need to consider what is required to measure the results.

The three important areas for metrics in Strategic Planning are:

1. Performance metrics
2. Follow up to determine progress and status
3. Visual management tools to show continuous progress and status

When you study the success of your business do you have quantifiable, tangible metrics that you can compare and consider to define success?  If not, how do you really know if you are on the right track?  I have heard many stories about small business owners that think they are doing well because they have money in their bank account but have no idea  how their Cash Flow and the Balance Sheet are or can be used to establish a starting point for success.  Think of the ramifications involved in this mentality.  Now expand that thinking to your business and the effectiveness of your Strategic Plan.

• What metrics do you use to measure your success?
• Then take it a step further, how do you verify the performance of your team?
• And then another step, how do you communicate this success to your team?

The answers to these three questions and the degree to which you understand and implement each concept relates directly to your ability to manage and your success.

We are having great success coaching and implementing these methods and skills and our clients love it!