Baseball, Steroids, and Performance Management
In case anyone questions why your performance management process includes an element of how you get your work done, look no farther than the steroid scandal that blew the lid off of professional baseball yesterday.
When any business, whether it’s baseball or B2B, decides that numbers matter more than ethics, then you get what happened in Major League Baseball. It’s the kind of thinking, and shirking of responsibility, that leads to illegal dumping of chemicals, shortcuts, and taking questionable risks in business. We’ve all seen the stories.
I’m not talking about having a “Did you play nice with others?” component to performance management. Sure, that’s important, but I’m talking about an ethical grounding to performance management. Having the strength to say that doing it right is the right thing to do. Kissy-kissy measures of how work gets done is weak; real judgments about how numbers were achieved with a look at the greater good, that’s a performance management system I could get behind. (And many of you know that in my world, performance management, in its present form should be scrapped.)
UPDATE: Loren Feldman at 1938Media puts this whole baseball fiasco into perspective in his inimitable style with a video called Baseball Broke My Heart. “We should be ashamed,” he says. I agree. It’s about baseball, but it’s also about cheating to win in whatever endeavor you’re in. A few NSFW words at the end, so careful if you’re playing this in your office.
Thought for the Day
I believe advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable.
-Russell Simmons, Hip-Hop Mogul
This quote in Fast Company made me think about some HR types complaining that they don’t have a place at the table. Truly great products don’t need advertising — they sell themselves.
Awarness. Attention. Action.
Here’s what works in HR communication: Make sure that your campaign moves employees from awareness to attention to action.
Too often, what passes for “communication” is nothing more that making employees aware. Sure, it’s fun to work on graphic identity, logos, branding, and taglines. But that is just about the big splash. You have to make people aware, that’s right. Just don’t stop there.
Once people are aware, it’s time to get their attention. Remember those Lexus ads where it was just a car hidden in the fog? That was awareness. Then the car came farther out of the fog. You could see it was a Lexus. That’s attention.
But getting their attention isn’t enough. You want your employees to do something. You want them to sign up for long-term insurance. You want them to work as part of a team. You want them to cooperate more. You want action.
Great communication campaigns drive positive behaviors. Awareness. Attention. Action. If you’re not thinking about all those steps, then you’re missing out on effective HR communication.
Not Everyone With a Pen is a Communicator
Even if it doesn’t work, there is something healthy and invigorating about direct action.
- Henry Miller
Here’s a little HR communication hint: Not everyone with a pen is a communicator.
You know how it goes. You write something. Then it gets edited. And edited again. Pretty soon what you end up with is an empty shell of its former self. The life — the intent — is lost with the stroke of a red pen.
What qualifies people to be editors? That they got an “A” in their Senior English class? Being a good writer for English class has about as much to do with communicating as being good on Nintendo’s Madden 2007 has to do with playing in the NFL. One is theory, the other is practice.
Communicating with your employees requires action. Sure, pick great words. Think about your audience. And at the end of the day, take Henry Miller’s advice. Even if every single word isn’t “perfect,” just go ahead. No single communication will be the Eureka! moment. It’s about what you say in composite, not the choice of a word or the construction of a perfectly formed sentence. That’s English class. This is business.
6AM to Chicago
I’m flying to Chicago tomorrow on a 6AM flight. It always amazes me how many business people are in airports at that time of day. My sense: There are a lot of driven, talented, and engaged superstars on those planes. Wouldn’t it be cool to interview everyone on a plane like that and synthesize their stories into a book about real employee engagement? No one has to tell people who take 6AM flights what to do or how to do it. They know.
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