Focus on Performance Discussion

Paper Instructions : Please respond to the Professor’s Questions to this students post.

Student:
Leadership and development is an integral part of equipping leaders and employees with the necessary skills to augment their team productivity. However, most leadership and development practices are usually channeled towards promoting essential skills among the leaders. However, instituting a paradigm to P&D orientation would particularly benefit the organization, especially given its functional design. Operating as a remote entity requires employees to be adequately motivated to buy into their goals and objectives. Through an employee-oriented focus, the organization will manage its remote operations effectively, recognizing individual efforts. The leadership will also get the latitude to assess when employees go above and beyond their stipulated tasks as part of their contributions to their success.

Managing a distributed and remote workforce is an arduous responsibility as it requires extra efforts to coordinate employees to buy-in and pursue similar goals successfully. One of the principles in helping navigate through the murky waters of managing a remote workforce is, making use of the network a priority. This phenomenon takes care of the workforce’s communication needs to ensure that there is a continuous flow of information to the required people at the right time. Operating in diverse locations presents a challenge of accomplishing team cohesiveness, such that making use of the network a priority will go a long way in helping solve this hurdle. Another essential principle is choosing performance support over training whenever possible. Performance support ensures that the employees get personalized 24/7 assistance within seconds of experiencing any challenges within their workstations. Providing staff with the right information at the right time improves their productivity as they have unlimited access to solutions to any issue encountered when undertaking their duties.

Another principle from Quinns P&D manifesto in guiding the distributed and remote workforce is, evaluating what I do. The employee should always be conscious of their actions as there is minimal supervision to ensure they are doing the right thing. Applying this principle ensures that all their actions align with production purposes, with minimal attention given to sideshows. The fourth principle is, practicing what I preach, which involves continual exploration and experimentation. Employees must stay upbeat in honing their innovative potentials, despite the remote operations. However, part of the challenge with this principle is that there is no close supervisory watch in ensuring the workers practice whatever is required of them. Suffice it to say; this move allows them to develop independence, which may help the firm with its leadership potential.

Lastly is the principle of explicitly facilitating learning and communication skills. Learning is a continuous process to ensure all workers are operating as a single unit. This phenomenon is especially important in this scenario where the employees are working from remote locations. Facilitating their learning also means that they stay up-to-date with any adjustments or professional skills needed to keep up with the changing work environment. Besides facilitating communication skills also promote connectedness within the organization. Communication is a key component for institutional success as it allows individuals to express their views and listen to others’ perspectives. The challenge with facilitating communication skills for a remote workforce is that there is no constant interaction among the people to help create a mutual camaraderie within the workforce. However, supporting this change would be a step in the right direction in promoting employee integration despite their remote locations.

Professor:
I agree with you that the employee-oriented focus on P&D efforts is critical. What are some ways in which you might ensure that the focus remains on the employee and their performance? Your description and argument supporting the principles you highlighted are great. I’m wondering if you have any specific examples in mind?

Respond to this student’s post to form a dialog and respond as if you are speaking directly to the student and not in essay form.

1. You want to persuade your new boss that you want to emphasize a P&D orientation, rather than traditional L&D focus. What would you say to your boss? Generally explain in 4 or 5 sentences why you think this is the best focus for the organization.

I think the biggest point in advocating for a P&D focus and taking into account my position as new in the L&D role, would be in communicating the value of each team and individual within the organization. Just taking my own organization as an example, there is a wide variety of skills and functions that go into our organization, that taking a P&D focused approach gives our team the opportunity to focus on individual needs and skills, in order to improve a wide variety of performance categories. Quinn states that studying to test is less effective than shifting our mindset to developing actual relevant skills (Quinn, 2014, p.182). The biggest potential gain from embracing P&D would be that organizations would be able to directly involve themselves in their development, in the development of their team, and in ensuring that the development matches the organizational goal.

2. Select any 5 of the 14 principles from Quinn’s P&D Manifesto (last pages of Ch 11). Provide some concrete ideas for how you might apply these principles to a distributed and remote workforce. Consider that your boss has concerns about performance in this new way of working. Consider the challenges, but also the opportunities in supporting this change.

Moving from a focus on learning to a focus on performance; integrating learning into work

– In terms of a distributed workforce and remote workforce, putting this idea into practice would involve a thorough understanding of the team’s function and the metrics of whether they are meeting the performance mark. By looking at the quantitative data, I could pin-point the performance areas and conduct a needs analysis for both remote and distributed teams. Taking those notes and using the revamped training as an on-the-job aid would provide a more tactile way of learning and would put a better focus on actual performance needs over general big-picture criteria.

Using all appropriate resources, not just training / Making the use of the network a priority

– The best concrete example would be to invest and seek the expertise of the employees themselves to act as resources. Establishing performance improvement teams that operate as subject matter experts in charge of monitoring and developing their members. Meeting together to brainstorm best practices, lessons learned, and creative suggestions would make the best of the resources and expand on networking within the organization to do so.

Explicitly facilitating learning and communication skills

– Feedback and an open avenue of communication for the P&D department is critical for facilitating communication and learning through improvement. I would consider creating a social forum where members can, at any point or place, provide anonymous feedback to the department about their positive experiences or constructive feedback about areas where learning could be improved. This provides an equal outlet for everyone to communicate and take part in their learning experience.

Evaluating what I do

– It goes back into feedback, but my best idea for evaluation is to survey each development program and look to the participants to give insight into the effectiveness of the current system. It not only would help to improve the team-specific development, but would also act as a good gauge on my own effectiveness as an L&D specialist.

Tiffany