Three Dimensional Performance Measurement

Performance management should take a multidimensional approach, to connect all important dots, with multifaceted perspectives. 

Hyper-connectivity and interdependence are the digital characteristics, it is important to understand that digital business development and transformation is the paradigm shift which takes multi-viewpoints, multi-discipline, and multi-stage approach. Strategy management, Change Management and performance management need to walk hand-in-hand. Most organizations fail to manage performance effectively because they often only focus on single dimensional behavior performance. In practice, performance assessment is a combination of many factors and shouldn't be quantified so easily. Performance Management is a multidimensional management discipline. Mindsets, behavior, and outcome are all important elements of performance evaluation. Here is the three-dimensional performance measurement.

Cognitive Performance: Digital transformation is the radical change starting at the mindset level. How advanced your thinking is will directly impact how far and how fast you can reach the vision. Cognition is the mental process of acquiring knowledge through personal thoughts, experiences, and senses. When we explore the mental process of acquiring new knowledge through thought, experience, and senses, the cognition involves exploring varieties of meanings/thoughts, abandoning old and establishing new relations. Cognition is by humans conscious and unconscious, concrete or abstract, intuitive and conceptual. Cognitive performance is important because the exponential growth of information and shortened knowledge lifecycle require people to think both broader and deeper, critically and creatively in order to make sound judgments and effective decisions. One of the most influencing aspects of people's cognition is how they perceive the world around and how they relate to it by applying diverse thought processes. To either unlock potential or advance the human race, it’s critical to bridging cognitive gaps by embracing cognitive difference, digging beneath the superficial layer, and see around the corner. This is a function of things like cognitive intelligence which will differentiate leaders from followers; change agents from laggards; and innovators from order-takers.

Creative Performance: Generally speaking, creativity is an innate thought process to create novel ideas. Creativity is the most wanted quality in the digital era. To be truly creative, you will challenge the status quo, conventional wisdom, and beliefs, as you push the parameters of the norms of life. Creativity is a state of openness which you set aside what you think you know, embrace the diverse viewpoint, and blend different types of thinking processes to understand things differently. Creative people are typically disrespectful of outdated rules, and their creativity is really their way of breaking out of or reframing how we see the world. Creative performance is critical and creative problem-solvers are in demand because creative minds can reframe questions before answering them. They are intellectually curious to ask good questions which bring a multifaceted perspective to figure out better solutions. Being original and authentic, breaking down the convention thinking box, and practicing out-of-the-box thinking are all important mental activities to unlock creative performance.

Behavior Performance: The mindset influences attitude and attitude drives behavior performance. The behavior performance is related to expectations that management has when it comes to an employee's role. Thus, roles and responsibilities need to be clearly defined and mutually understood. The desired outcome is to assess the employee's contribution and ability to fulfill tasks and objectives in line with the organizational goals both at the strategic and operational level qualitatively and quantitatively. In many traditional organizations, people performance management turns out to be an annual routine to focus mainly on past performance. The hindsight driven performance management could become the barrier to tap into the talent potential and achieve the long-term strategic goals of the business. In order to effectively and efficiently perform one's responsibilities, the performance measures are set using envelopes so they know how much above and beyond expectation people are achieving or not achieving. The end result is managers feel supported and want to invest the time and effort in dealing with poor performance, mediocre mindset and culture.

Performance management should take a multidimensional approach, to connect all important dots, with multifaceted perspectives. The more meaningful and important the thing you want to assess, the harder it is to measure objectively. Cognitive performance, creative performance, and behavior performance provide different angles to make an objective assessment of talent and capability qualitatively and quantitatively, encourage the freedom of thinking and action, with the goal to develop collective business competency and accelerate the overall business performance.

Posted in: Creativity,IT Performance Management,KPIs,Performance Master