Tag Archives: Performance

How long past 65 will you work: Where are the next leaders?

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Looking for new ways to improve the performance of your leaders? Join Healthcare Performance Solutions for a free Webinar on the “Coaching Adults in a Professional Setting.” There will be two times to conveniently meet your scheduling needs. Click on the links below to sign up and join us to learn how to turn the odds of success in your favor.

Tuesday Mar 13th – 12:00 -1:00pm (EST)

Click Here to Register
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/483746602

Thursday Mar 15th – 2:00 – 3:00pm (EST)

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https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/334663218

The Leadership Void

83% of today’s leadership positions in Healthcare are between the ages of 35-55.  By 2020 these numbers will change drastically.  Demographics don’t lie.  Eventually the Baby Boomer generation will look to retire.  The total number of potential leaders will NOT be large enough to fill the vacancies of the retiring Baby Boomers.

As seen in the graph below, there will be significantly fewer experienced leaders in the workforce in the near future. This will lead to a competition for this demographic.  The workers that are supposed to be taking over leadership positions will not be ready.  What will happen to your organization?  How will you make up this shortfall?  How long will your current leaders hang on?  How long will you hang on?

The old process was to put people in jobs, give them a chance, and weed out those who couldn’t face the pressure or handle the responsibility.  This laissez-faire leadership development model is broken if the leadership pool is shrinking faster than you can discard marginal candidates.

Structured talent management and superior business practices are the only demonstrated ways to survive this certain leadership void.  Succession Planning should be the result of disciplined Talent Management programs.  Changing tactics to adopt a structured program that will build a Succession Planning Roadmap is going to give your organization a measurable competitive advantage in the challenging dynamics of the Healthcare industry.  Those that grasp these structured concepts will reap the competitive rewards of the early adapter and thrive while others around them wither.

From finding, to hiring, to developing the right leaders so they are available for your organization when you need them, structured talent management that results in pro-active Succession Planning is a superior approach.  Based on measurement, fore-thought, and incisive action, it will dramatically improve your Healthcare organization’s performance as a business.

Healthcare Performance Solutions has a full suite of tools, featuring the industries finest in visual presentations.  The full suite forms a “GPS-like” array of measurement tools that give leaders precise and actionable information about their departments and leaders.  The measurements and resulting actions culminate in our structured and powerfulSuccession Planning Roadmap.

Improving the health of healthcare one organization at a time is our core purpose.  But our business is about people as well as their performance.  So we add on experienced executive coaching to our products.  We believe in the value of coaching and that it improves a leader’s performance, in turn increasing your organizations odds of success.

Visit us on-line at http://healthcareps.com/ to learn about the Eye Chart tools, performance measurement, 100 Day Leadership and Management On-Boarding, Compelling Coaching Conversations, and the Succession Planning Roadmap.

Read any or all of our blogs at blog.rightpeoplerightroles.com

Or give us a call.  We are the most affordable and effective performance and talent management company in Healthcare.  We will help you be successful.

The Performance Management Eye Chart — Part V

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Looking for new ways to improve your Talent Management and Leadership Alignment? Join Success Profiles and Healthcare Performance Solutionsfor a free Webinar on the “Key Elements of Leadership Performance and Talent Management.” There will be two times to conveniently meet your scheduling needs. Click on the links below to sign up and join us to learn how you we can take your organization the next level.

Tuesday Feb 28th – 12:00 -1:00pm (EST)

Click Here to Register
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/452022386

Thursday Mar 1st – 2:00 – 3:00pm (EST)

Click Here to Register
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/191420178

THE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT EYE CHART

Performance Management Eye Chart

Being a leader is difficult work. In some departments it is very difficult work. In others it is moderately so, but all leaders contribute to your organization’s success. Successful organizations make a great effort to match the abilities of its leaders to the difficulty of the role in which they are being placed. Putting the right people in the right roles is one of the most powerful actions an organization can use to guarantee its own success.
The Performance Management Eye Chart (PMEC) is an inclusive, incisive, broad and detailed look at an organization. Objective performance rankings are color-coded in the PMEC. The combination of color-coded ranks and specific performance measurements shows how individual departments contribute to the overall performance both accurately and at a glance.

It is hard to always get leadership alignment right, especially without help from a tool like the PMEC; the first step to getting alignment right is to recognize, then admit, when you have succeeded and when you have not. The very best way to make that recognition is through objective measurement! The second difficult challenge is taking action on the knowledge. Objective measurement gives senior leadership the confidence to take action earlier, when it can make the most difference in charting a better course for the organization’s success.

This means taking early action is an incredibly effective skill, making the Performance Management Eye Chart an extreme value. Especially in tight economic times, it is essential to not shut down performance measurement activities, but to make sure the organization invests in products that deliver out-sized value. The PMEC is the premier performance measurement tool in Healthcare, and is remarkably affordable.

Only through measurement can an organization truly determine how a broad spectrum of departments are performing and contributing to the operation’s bottom line. Through measurement, each department and leader can be held accountable and the organization’s critical leadership talent apportioned where it will do the most good. Without it, we are all, more or less, sophisticated guessers; a great game to play when things are going well and a very uncomfortable place to be when performance starts to deteriorate. You can see it, feel it, but only wonder why things aren’t quite the same anymore . . . .

ODDS OF SUCCESS CHART

Odds of Success Chart

What are the 7 typical appointment mistakes that organizations make?

  1. Appointing a B level person into a complex management role based upon their tenure period or technical competency (clinical/financial expertise). The ability to lead others does not correlate with tenure or technical expertise. Odds of Success = 45%.
  2. Appointing a lower level “supervisor” into a manager position in a bottom quartile (failing RED) department out of convenience. They are usually unsuccessful because of their lack of management experience (higher level of responsibility); they tend to be part of the status quo culture, and they are less likely to take action on the low performers or make tough decisions. Odds of Success = < 20%.
  3. Not recognizing that a complex department in the bottom quartile (failing RED) will require a “Turnaround” specialist who is used to making tough decisions quickly. Most B level managers do well in maintenance roles. A “turnaround” is a completely different, very challenging situation where doing what’s right for the department and stakeholders outweighs the personal interests of an individual. Odds of Success for a B level leader = < 20%.
  4. Waiting too long to act and failing to set hard, measurable target performance expectations with milestone dates on the first-year road-map for a new manager. “As goes the first 90 days, so goes the remainder of the year.” If new managers don’t make the heavy-lifting decisions, especially dealing with negative, disruptive, poor performers, immediately, turning around the department takes longer, is usually more painful, and has a lower overall success rate. Odds of Success = < 20%.
  5. Not considering leadership talent or ability. Assigning a C or D level leader in any role has low Odds of Success. The average C player has Odds of Success of 30% and a D player has odds of 15%. The overall success rate for a combined C or D level leader is that they have a 25% Odds of Success.
  6. Low acceptance rate of a new leader/manager by the staff because of an “old school” mindset that tenure in the department is a qualifier or even prerequisite for appointment. Some departments (and people within the departments) are unforgiving when it comes to a manager’s qualifications to lead in the role. The behavioral pattern is to “chew up and spit out” the “substitute teacher” managers as soon as possible. It can be extremely difficult for some people to handle this situation long enough to succeed. Odds of Success = < 33%
  7. Ignoring Competency Alignment. Sometimes, even the most talent leaders (A players) can be out of alignment technically, business-model wise, behaviorally, or in maturity or experience. The most common situation is insufficient technical competence and/or a business-model deficiency where a competent leader in one department/function cannot be respected as a leader in a totally different area of expertise. They simply won’t know what to do in difficult situations. The other common situation is a poor cultural or behavioral fit, where the culture of the organization is too dominant for the person to adjust to or the maturity level of the leader is too low to adapt to what will be most effective. Odds of Success = < 33%.

The Performance Management Eye Chart is the ultimate tool for measuring the performance of every department in your organization and putting it on one intelligible, accessible page. It is based on multiple sources, giving it stability and accuracy. It is actionable, and it is the first step towards aligning talented leaders into your organization’s most difficult roles.

Get one for yourself! Give us a call about what the PMEC can mean for your organization. . . We love to talk about you!

The Performance Management Eye Chart — Part IV

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What Does Being In “Over Your Head” Look Like?

Performance Management Eye Chart

(pssst . . . it’s the columns on the left)

The “Peter Principle”, nepotism, favoritism, grandfathering, tenure, ‘Good Ol’ Boy” Network, buddy system, and on and on . . .  We have a lot of terms for promoting and carrying leaders that are not performing to expectations.  Very few of them are compliments.  In most cases, this practice reflects a weakness in business leadership

Several common appointment mistakes produce sub-optimized performance when leaders and managers are put into situations where they are literally in “over their heads.” The easiest way to describe this “over-leveraged” condition is that the department’s complexity, or degree of difficulty, exceeds the threshold level where the manager has better than a 50% chance of success.

For a C level talent or ability, this is virtually any management position (regardless of complexity) because their odds of success are only 40% at best, even in the lowest-complexity positions. The decision to appoint C level leadership ability to low-complexity departments should be made only when the obstacles and barriers are easily managed or when the person has some previous experience in managing the day-to-day operations.  If the manager begins to struggle or fail, the reasons are usually very apparent: they are in over their heads.

How about those B’s?

As noted by Thomas J. DeLong and Vineeta Vijayaraghavan in their 2003 Harvard Business Review Article, Let’s Hear it for B Players, B level managers are solid, consistent performers who are competent, experienced, consistent, and loyal.   The average organization has between 50% and 60% of their executives, directors, and managers at the B level of leadership ability. These managers make up the backbone of any organization.  For a B level leadership talent, the ability to manage low – and medium -complexity situations produces favorable results 75% and 60% of the time, respectively (see Odds of Success diagram below).

The only time that B level leaders and managers have low odds of success, when they often are in over their heads, is when they are appointed to complex assignments or departments.  It is here that the odds of success dip below the 50% level to 45%. It’s not that they cannot be successful, it’s just less likely.  If the decision is made to appoint a B level talent to this level of complexity, they really need to be “over-achievers” or at the B+ level to succeed at all costs or a steep price.

  • They define success differently, not in purely financially or status terms.
  • While they work hard at work, they prioritize “life-work” balance and prefer to work 50 hours per week instead of 70 to 80 or more.
  • They are usually excellent team players and avoid the spotlight of self promotion.
  • They may have been A level performers at one time and have dialed back their career focus, often due to other priorities or “throttling” down to semi-retirement.
  • They have longer tenures in organizations because they are less likely to leap from job to job in order to fast-track or advance their careers.
  • They carry a significant amount of an organization’s intellectual capital due to their experience and tenure.

The Performance Management Eye Chart (PMEC) is a visual tool that compares leadership effectiveness and cultural engagement at glance.  Leaders can instantly see which departments have healthy cultures of excellence and which ones are facing difficulties. With a unique style of presenting information in a way that allows both detailed focus and overall vision, the Eye Charts synthesize and present meaning, allowing you to see the complete performance picture.

The truth is, in any organization, it is a smart, disciplined mix of leadership talent that matches the complexity and challenge of each department that best leads to success.   A Level Leaders should be placed in the most challenging roles, but trying to hire only A Level Leaders is expensive, difficult, and creates teamwork problems.  It did not work for Enron and it will not work for anyone else.  B leaders are excellent in the right place, and C Employees make worthy contributions to organizations every day.

Put the right people in the right roles by starting that process with the Performance Management Eye Chart, which will quantify and illustrate the impact that leadership has on overall performance and the existing culture in your organization, one leader and one department a time.

The Performance Management Eye Chart — Part III

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The Ineluctable Impact of Leadership and Cultural Engagement

Today’s obscure but incredible word is ineluctable.  To define, something which is ineluctable is something which cannot be avoided, changed, or resisted: inevitable.  To use it in a sentence: “Given the business practices of past management, disappointing results proved ineluctable.”  Or this sentence: “Once the Hospital’s leadership adopted the Eye Chart Tools and followed through with the recommended courses of action, success was ineluctable!”

Good leadership affects every aspect of operations, including the patient experience, employee morale, and financial results.  Top-performing HealthCare organizations work hard to get it, get more of it, and improve that which they do have.

A study by Success Profiles in July, 2010, examined the leadership performance and cultural engagement index scores of 104 healthcare systems throughout the United States. Continue reading →

The Performance Management Eye Chart — Part II

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Opposites Attract  . . . but only if each opposite values what the other opposite has to offer.  In fact, I think we find it rare for opposite qualities to exist together in a way that is lasting and benefits from the pairing.  It can be even harder when we force two things together we find attractive but ending up acting like the same poles on a magnet, repulsing each other as hard as they can.  Sure, we will always have chocolate and peanut butter, but in the serious world of Healthcare operations, it is hard to find opposite things combine in a way that improves the result; and when we do it is hard to keep them together.  For example, every time we try to objectively measure performance in our organization and present it in a meaningful way, we seem to have to choose.  Do we want detail or a wide field of view?   Do we want to see everything at once, or do we want to see the numbers, in specific detail?  Yes, we want both.  How can we get both?

The Performance Management Eye Chart quantifies and illustrates the impact that leadership has on overall performance and the existing culture, one leader and one department a time, and puts the results together in one place. One can instantly observe the capability and performance of Continue reading →

The Performance Management Eye Chart — Part I

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Assessing leadership performance is similar to swimming:

You cannot assess competency with a written test.

Our key premise is that the most effective and fastest way to improve performance throughout an organization is to improve the effectiveness of leadership, one leader and one department at a time.   Meanwhile, it seems the key premise of some leaders is:  “Improve who?   Improve me?  Why me?” Continue reading →

Degree of Coachability

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1.  Do they respect you

Why are you giving advice to this leader?  Is it necessary to help improve their performance?  Do you have a stake in their success?  Does the leader trust your motives, your interest in their success, and your knowledge about the subject.  Do they have reason to believe you have some expertise in the subject?  The confidence the leader has in your genuine concern for them, your expertise about the subject, and your common interest in their success will greatly influence their willingness to listen and act on your coaching guidance.  Do you have the authority to enforce negative or positive consequences for this leader?  If so, you can get compliance even without the above considerations, but you will get much better and longer lasting results if the above are all true.

2.  Have they bought into the quantitative assessment of their performance and agree with the feedback?

If the measurements show the leader’s performance is very good, employees buy-in easily; so if you are getting disagreement, we can assume the measurements show performance shortcomings.  However, the measurement tools have been carefully built over a long time to be resilient.  They come from extremely diverse observations and this diversity provides extremely accurate placement.  The absolute number may not be perfectly accurate to the decimal point, but the ranking information is accurate and reliable.  Receiving this news, if it is bad, drives a person through the stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.  Respect this process but be firm.  Use hard metrics to verify the measurements and accelerate the process, but be tactful and kind (Please see the 5 Stages of Grief)

3.  Do they agree with the qualitative assessment regarding the upside benefits of improving and the downside consequences of not improving?

The next step in this process is to gain buy-in.  Change is difficult.  Do you have the evidence or experience to justify your prediction of a better future state if the leader undertakes the change you expect?  Does the leader agree that if their performance changed, the results would be better for the entire organization? Continue reading →

Success Profiles appears in the new book, Success Simplified

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SUCCESS SIMPLIFIED

Simple Solutions Measurable Results

Mark Twain once apologized to a friend for sending him a long letter by saying “I didn’t have time to send you a short one”.  Of course he meant he was writing to his friend as he thought, instead of taking the time to edit his thoughts, and especially not to test them for practicality.  Success Profiles wants to tell you about a new book from Insight Publishing written to help leaders also short of time, but who are serious about the subject of success.  “Success Simplified” is a terrific series of interviews from Insight Publishing, in which some of the most distinguished business thought-leaders have distilled their thoughts into useful, tested, and practical advice.  These revealing shortcuts to success are led off by Success Profiles with Tom Olivo’s “Leadership Alignment and Getting the Right People in the Right Roles.”  Tom’s remarkable concepts prove leaders are the key to success and they are far more likely to be successful when they are put in the right roles.  His analysis is backed up by 25 years of hard performance measurements of thousands of leaders across industry, most notably in healthcare.   Success Profiles would be proud to help simplify your success.

Tom Olivo, Success Profiles, Inc.

Tom Olivo, through Success Profiles, has measured the performance of more than a thousand organizations and developed a database of business practices that include more than 30,000 individual business units.  He co-authored the 2003 business best-seller, “Impending Crisis”, and is today one of the premier experts in practical and applied measurement for business performance.

Concepts featured in Success Simplified…

  • There several common denominators of success among athletes and business executives.
  • When coaching people for any endeavor, there is a simple structured approach that leads to the most consistent desired outcome. Continue reading →