Over the forty years I have been observing and studying performance management, I have come to the conclusion that the major performance traps are so much part of the DNA of management that they are common in most organisations. Organisations need to challenge the status quo in the following areas:

1. Operating without a unified and widely understood set of critical success factors that should drive priorities throughout the workplace.
2. Working with poorly thought out performance measures all of which are incorrectly termed Key performance indicators.
3. Using large strategic planning processes and annual budgeting to stifle performance.
4. Retaining staff, processes and reporting that no longer fit the organisation rather than adopting Peter Drucker’s abandonment
5. Starting projects without a group-wide understanding of how to sell and lead change resulting in too many stalled or failed projects.
6. The belief that management can organise training, minimise recruitment failures and develop talent without the direction and oversight from a well-resourced HR function.
7. Creating barriers to innovation instead of unleashing “every brain in the game”.
8. “Time poor” practices that are followed by management and then replicated by the up and coming rising stars.
9. Using ill-conceived, unfair and dysfunctional performance related pay schemes that are detrimental to the long-term wealth of the organisation.
10. Allowing growth in the layers of management ending up with executives whose only purpose is to attend one meeting after another.
11. Sourcing senior leadership positions from outsiders who are brought in to the organisation because of a lack of leadership development of the in-house talent.
12. Undertaking takeovers and mergers in the misguided belief that they will add value in the long term.
13. Using re-organisations to remove unwanted senior management– which in the process disenfranchises all staff and weakens the organisation.
14. The propensity to rely on error prone systems built in spreadsheets by well-meaning but misguided staff.
15. Using late monthly reporting to monitor performance when you need daily weekly information to create change.

“What makes a good leader?” I was asked across a dinner table. To answer this you need to understand what makes a serving leader. How do you obtain the qualities and character that make people want to follow you over the top of the trenches? I have been exploring leadership for some time. As a disciple of Peter Drucker I have read most of his work, and I have spent much time interpreting the exploits of modern-day leaders such as Jack Welch former CEO of General Electric and comparing their styles to historic leaders such as Sir Winston Churchill, Horatio Nelson, and Sir Ernest Shackleton.

If you want to access the latest thoughts of David Parmenter on implementing Quarterly Rolling Forecasting, buy his implementation guide which is constantly updated and is a comprehensive (120 pages) guide. If you want to implement a planning tool, buy his implementation guide(110 pages). Both of these guides come with electronic templates to get your implementation started.  At the time of acquisition, David reviews, updates the guide as appropriate, and emails them to the purchaser.

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