I don’t really know what the term ‘performance management' means

I don’t really know what the term  ‘performance management’ means.

I don’t know the purpose of performance reviews.

I’m unsure what a development plan looks like.

I don’t know the ideal goal-cycle.

Yet, these are terms I use everyday.

You might ask what the heck have I been doing for the last 10 years... Bear with me.

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I can’t define exactly what many HR terms actually mean, or what other people mean when they say them to me.

Now obviously I get the essence of all this HR lingo.

I’ve been able to infer meanings from years of HR-oriented conversations.

But, sometimes I still find myself on a different page.

For example, I’ll say performance management and some people respond talking about a ‘PIP’.

And sometimes I’m corrected from using a ‘dirty’ word like performance ‘management’ which is swapped for ‘enablement’.

But ‘managers’ are ‘coaches’... or ‘leaders’? Or should that be enablers!

How can we build effective performance management without a common HR language?

No, I’m not going to try and re-write HR’s vocabulary.

But, I am going to share an alternate approach.

A way that I think is far more human and intuitive, which enables us to master performance management, without ‘properly’ understanding any of those terms.

This is the way I taught myself before I knew anything about HR processes.

It’s the way I built a high-performing team that out-competed companies way more resourced than we were.

And it’s the way we build Crewmojo today.

It can be boiled down to 3 simple bullet points.

I believe all other components of employee performance are downstream from these ideas.

And if you truly live them, you don’t need to worry about all the terminology.

Let's dive in:

1. Employee performance is  nothing more than how well an employee completes their work.
2. Your ability to get the best from an employee is directly correlated with how well you set the environment up for their success.
3. The more you increase these two metrics (employee capability + success conditions), the higher performance will be.

If you create a people experience that addresses the demands of those 3 points, but do nothing else in terms of formal HR processes, then it really won’t matter because you’ll have a high-performing team anyway.

Another thing that is really cool when we think from this lens. We come from a first principles approach.

• You can strip away all the stuff that you're told you ‘should’ be doing.
• You can design performance from the ground up, for your organization.
• You can implement only tools and processes that add value and make sense.

No longer are you forcing a square peg into a round hole.

Anything you can think of that will deliver this end goal is on the table.

And that is how you develop your unique, but simple and effective approach to high-performance.

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