Is it Better to Work on Strengths or Weaknesses?

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It takes far less energy to move from first-rate performance to excellence than it does to move from incompetence to mediocrity. – Peter Drucker

Throughout my career, I’ve put a lot of effort into overcoming my weaknesses.  As a result of coaching and reading numerous books and articles on self-development, I have always viewed my weaknesses as barriers to success and something that I needed to work hard to overcome.  I’ve recently begun to wonder, though, whether focusing too heavily on my weaknesses took time that could have been better spent developing my strengths.

In The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker wrote that, by focusing on our weaknesses, the best we can achieve is mediocrity.  On the other hand, working to further developing our strengths can result in greatness.

Most people excel in the areas that motivate them.  Alternatively, weaknesses tend to come from the things in which people are not really interested.  Focusing attention on developing the things people either can’t improve or aren’t interested in improving can lead to frustration, stress, and an overall lack of motivation.

People are motivated when they are able to do meaningful work, learn and develop, and have fun.  And continually developing in an area of strength and utilizing the strength to contribute to an organization’s success help make this happen.

Addressing the Organization’s Weaknesses

It is obviously important to understand and continually close the critical skill gaps that exist within an organization.  Doing this effectively requires hiring the “right” people and continually making them “more right.”  One of the critical objectives of hiring is to put together a team where individual strengths complement one another and people are able to effectively cover each other’s weaknesses, but focusing the hiring process on minimizing the organization’s weaknesses, however, will never lead to greatness.

The performance review process in most organizations targets an individual’s weaknesses.  Although strengths are usually identified – although more in terms of results than the fundamental strength that led to the result – the individual is often expected to work on the weaknesses before the next review.  There is rarely conversation about how the person can further develop strengths during the coming year.

Knowing Your Strengths

Developing your strengths assumes that you know your strengths.  For most of my career, I have approached people and asked for feedback and coaching about my work, interactions with others, and overall performance.  Whenever I have these conversations, however, I try to get the other person to talk about the areas in which I need to improve – in other words, my weaknesses.  Lately however, I’ve tried to turn the discussion around and have asked for feedback on my strengths.  What I’ve found is that it puts the other person much more at ease and comfortable giving me the feedback I need to improve.

Although this has helped improve the conversation, I have found that it is important for the other person to know that I’m not looking for compliments.  I am looking for feedback on my areas of strength where, if I got even stronger, could greatly help the organization and my own career.

Like anything, this type of conversation takes practice to provide real value, so it is important to stick with it and be consistent about holding the meetings.

PDSA to Understand & Develop Strengths

To better understand strengths and weaknesses, Peter Drucker suggested writing down goals related to a specific objective or project.  After six months or so, he recommended returning to the list and reflecting on which goals were achieved and which were not.  After doing this over a period of time, a picture will start to emerge that identifies strengths and weaknesses.  In addition to showing strengths and weaknesses in execution, it will show how strong the person is in planning and selecting the right things on which to work.

This is closely aligned with W. Edwards Deming’s Theory of Knowledge and the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) Cycle.  Within a PDSA mindset, learning only takes place when the hypothesis is clear, which means that the person or team clearly and consciously understands the expected results from a given action or plan.  I believe Drucker’s advice deals with applying PDSA on a personal level to drive learning.

For this approach to be successful, I believe that the list must be remain personal.  As soon as something like this becomes public or part of a person’s performance review, there will be a tendency to skew results and show more success than really occurred and, as a result, interfere with reflection and learning.  Most organizations are not mature enough in their thinking for people to be truly open about their performance and, in particular, their weaknesses. 

It’s Not All or Nothing

Focusing on your strengths does not mean completely ignoring your weaknesses.  This is not about developing knowledge or a particular skill.  It is about using knowledge and skills to be successful.  If you have a weakness that is interfering with success, the more you know about it and address it, the more successfully you will be.  The key, though, is to avoid spending significant time overcoming a weakness.  Once it is addressed to the point where it no longer interferes with using your strengths to be successful, stop worrying about it and refocus on your strengths.

Why People Don't Develop

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“If we do not give people accurate feedback based on real behavior they are not growing and we are not respecting them. The job of a leader is not to put them in positions to fail, but to put them in challenging positions where they must work hard to succeed and still see how they could have been even better. “ – Akio Toyoda

_____

If you are a production manager and one of your machines develops a problem that is resulting in increased costs or poor quality, would you let the problem continue until the next time maintenance is due?  For most of us, the answer would be, “no.”  We would shut down the machine and fix it to stop the problem from continuing.

If you are a manager and one of your team members is having a behavioral or capability problem that is resulting in increased costs, poor quality, or missing commitments, what would you do?  Experience tells me that many would wait until the next performance review to point out the problems and work for improvement (oh, and assign a poor rating in the process).

One of the biggest problems facing organizations today in the drive to improve is the inability of many managers to provide regular and relevant feedback to team members and work with them to improve.  There are a variety of reasons for this but, unless we start to dig into the causes and address them, the problem will continue and our ability to drive and sustain improvements in safety, quality, production, and cost will be severely limited.

The Causes

Over the years, I’ve found many reasons for the lack of ability to provide effective feedback for team member development that occurs in many organizations.  Although most of the reasons are fairly simple to recognize, they are system-level issues and can be difficult to address.  Like any problem facing an organization, however, a focused effort with clear objectives can result in significant improvements.

The reasons many organizations are poor at developing people include the following:

• Leaders Don’t Know How: Coaching and developing people is not something that comes naturally to most people.  When we promote someone into a supervisory position, we need to develop his or her skills in coaching and leading a team.  We must help leaders understand the types of conversations to have with people and how to recognize when improvement is needed and occurring.  They also need to understand how to approach these conversations with respect and utilize questioning, rather than telling, to guide development.
• Inconsistent Leadership Styles: Variation in leadership styles is one of the most unrecognized and destructive problems in business.  Unless we have a clear idea of the competencies we want in the organization’s leaders, the resulting inconsistency will confuse people and lead to demotivation, high turnover, and poor performance.
• It’s Not Valued: Leaders are often not held accountable for development because it is not valued by the organization.  Organizations that take a cream to rises to the top approach to identifying leaders often follow a hands off approach to development creating an environment of competition and silos rather than teamwork and problem-solving.
• Poor Hiring Practices: If we continue to hire people who don’t fit into the organization’s culture, the problem will be overwhelming to those managers who truly want to develop those on their team.  Hiring a new employee is a much more important decision than many people recognize, and unless candidates are carefully screened for fit before they enter the organization, they can do significant damage before we realize we have a problem.
• Overemphasis on the Performance Review: Organizations that do not value development tend to put more pressure on completing performance review on schedule than worrying about whether or not it actually results in improvement.  In this type of environment, managers often feel they are fulfilling their responsibility as a leader by having one or two conversations per year related to development.

It’s a Daily Thing

Avoiding conversations with people related to areas to improvement need to happen every day in real situations.  Besides the effect this can have on the performance of the team and the organization, orienting these conversations toward truly helping someone develop and improve shows a level of respect that people will remember for years afterwards.

Demotivating Employees One Performance Review At A Time

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After all that's been written about the destructive effects of the traditional performance review, it's amazing how many business still do it. It's been proven in study after study that grading or assigning a number to a person's performance - especially when forced into a "normal" distribution - results in far greater demotivation than improvement. Companies that continue the practice, though, tend to feel that they're the exception rather than the rule.

Let's say, for example, that you have the best employees in your industry. After all, this is a goal of the hiring, leadership, and employee development processes, right? If we have a performance rating system that forces a normal distribution of ratings, we would have to find ways to separate the "top" performers from the "average" and "low" performers. By doing this, will we actually motivate the "lower" performers to improve by assigning them lower grades? Unfortunately, in most cases, the motivation this type system creates is to energize the worker to stop caring about the company or to find a job with another company.

Okay, in reality, you probably don't have the best employees in your industry. You probably have team members who do not perform as well as you would like. But is this the fault of the employee? Can we force the type of change we desire by rating and normally distributing people? Or should we study the situation to understand and correct the causes that interfere with everyone from performing well. These causes can usually be traced to one or more critical company systems, including:

• The hiring process
• The employee development process
• The system and style of leadership
• The rating system itself

WHY NORMALLY DISTRIBUTE?

It is interesting that some businesses feel that their systems for hiring and developing people are consistent and predictable enough to justify a normal distribution of ratings. Besides the fact that this is often driven more by gut feel than data, it assumes that the company has no effect on employee performance beyond assigning a rating to motivate the person to improve on his or her own.

A normal distribution doesn't just happen.  It results from consistency and tight control over a process and, in the case of performance reviews, normally distributing the ratings and tying to raises and bonuses is tampering, which is destructive and interferes with the system's ability to remain normal.

Understanding that there is no logical basis for normally distributing performance ratings will be a major step toward improving performance. Let's say, for example, that in your efforts to build the best workforce in the industry, you decide to rid the company of its below average performers. So you rank everyone, figure out through some means those who fall into the bottom half, and fire them. So you now only have above average workers, right? Not exactly.

You could actually continue this practice with the remaining workers because you will now have a new average and a new set of workers who are "below average." You could even keep ranking until you have two remaining workers and guess what? One of the two will perform below average. Even with only one worker, you would find that he or she will perform below average roughly half the time.

WHAT TO DO

The fist step to improve employee morale and performance is to figure out whether or not the performance review system is actually achieving the results for which it's intended. Is performance actually improving or is there no discernible difference? If the system is not resulting in improvement (like most), stop doing it. It does not matter if you don't have a process with which to replace it. Like anything you do in a company, if it's causing harm or costing money and time with no return, you need to change it or stop doing it altogether.

Secondly, figure out what the real problem is and what's causing it to occur. If employees aren't performing, is it due to a poor hiring process, ineffective leadership, lack of attention to development, or some other cause? Is failure to consistently meet objectives due to poor planning, too many priorities, lack of teamwork? Whatever the cause (and its probably a combination of many), this is where efforts can result in real improvement. You can continue to spend time judging performance and ranking people, but without effective leadership, planning, and a host of other elements, frustration and employee turnover will occur, but improvement will not.

FEEDBACK, YES . . . RANKING, NO

Effective leaders talk to those on their teams. They coach and develop on a continual basis, rather than wait for the once or twice per year performance review. Of course, leaders need to know how to coach and mentor, but those who resist the process and fail to make it happen are ignoring one of the most important responsibilities of leadership and should be in other jobs.

Everyone, regardless of position can benefit from coaching, and effective coaching requires continual feedback. It takes time and a lot of effort to be successful, but the process can lead to increased employee motivation, much better teamwork, and improved overall performance.

Communicating With Workers - A New Concept?

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In an article in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week, Brittany Hite wrote about the differences in giving feedback to younger workers as compared to older workers (Employers Rethink How They Give Feedback). In the article, Ms. Hite presents six points to remember when giving feedback to Gen Y employees:

• Avoid surprises by giving feedback on a continual basis instead of waiting for the annual performance review;

• Be clear on expectations, especially when discussing a new task;

• Listen and make sure the feedback is given through open dialogue;

• Keep it loose and informal;

• Discuss what you’ve learned from them;

• Keep notes to make the feedback sessions more constructive.

While it’s commendable to see the WSJ provide this type of information to managers in the business world, it is a shame that these steps are presented only in the context of dealing with younger workers. We have gotten so far away from understanding the basic responsibilities of management that we think wanting open and constructive communication within the workplace is something new. Do people actually believe that it is acceptable for a manager to not communicate to older workers in this way? If there is a difference between the two generations of workers, it is in the expectations. After years of working for American companies and receiving little or no consistent or constructive feedback, older workers have most likely lowered their expectations in order to survive.

The writer goes on to say, “Increased demand for feedback from younger workers is forcing some employers to rethink how they discuss employee performance review. Often, the annual review just won’t cut it anymore.” Guess what? The annual performance review has never “cut it.” It doesn’t matter which generation the worker is from – people need continual communication and feedback in order to develop and improve. Waiting for the once-per-year meeting to talk with a team member, although a common practice in the U.S., is just bad management.

Too often, people are promoted to management positions because of financial knowledge and/or technical skills instead of leadership abilities. If someone performs well in the position they are in, it is assumed that they are promotable into management. And once a person is put into a management position, developing his or her skills as a leader becomes a low priority. As a result, poor communication becomes the norm and the organization and people who work there, stagnate.

Continual feedback and coaching has always been an essential responsibility of a manager. Success in management comes when the manager makes the people on his or her team successful. It is impossible to do this without continual communication and clarity on expectations. Waiting for the annual performance review to do this is illogical and ineffective.

I had a conversation fairly recently with the CEO of a mid-sized U.S. company. Since he is nearing retirement, he and the Board are looking for someone to replace him. He proceeded to tell me the main characteristics for the type of person he is looking for and not one had anything to do with leadership capability. If leadership competency is not important at the top of the organization, there is little chance that it will exist at any other level.

If the information in the article is the result of younger workers demanding that managers fulfill their responsibilities as leaders by coaching and developing team members, then I encourage these younger workers to keep up the pressure. We desperately need a revolution in management practices in this country and it may take the unrelenting energy of younger workers to make it happen.

And a note to any young professionals who may be reading this . . . please remember all of this when it is your turn to enter the management ranks. Remember how important feedback and coaching was to you and how you didn’t get enough of it when you were new to the workforce. I’m counting on you to save American companies from the death spiral that the traditional western approach to managing organizations has caused.

A 360° Savior?

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It can help, but if you're expecting 360° feedback to drive improvement, your wait may be long and frustrating

Those who have read W. Edwards Deming’s books [1,2] or experienced one of his 4-day seminars undoubtedly learned about the destructive effects that performance review systems have on people and organizations. Despite the warnings from Deming and others about the detrimental effects of the practice, however, many managers continue to cling to the process because they don’t know of anything with which to replace it (which, it should be noted, is no excuse to continue a practice that, at best, has no value to the organization). Now that we have 360° feedback systems our problems are solved, right? Probably. . . not.

A 360° feedback system is a process that enables an individual to receive feedback from his or her supervisor, subordinates and co-workers (hence the name, 360°). The process has gained considerable attention in recent years as a way to overcome the problems associated with a traditional performance review system. Although in theory the process makes sense, when implemented in an improper culture it can be just as destructive as traditional reviews. Just like many other performance improvement tools, 360° feedback is only effective when implemented in an improvement-focused environment where the leaders understand and support the theory behind the concept.

WHAT IT DOESN'T DO
As with other organizational improvement tools used over the years, 360° feedback has been over-hyped and promised to deliver much more than it actually can. Because of this, expectations are high when an organization embarks on a mission to implement the system. Unfortunately, this often leads to frustration, disappointment and further distrust of improvement initiatives, which is something that we have too much of in organizations already.

To align expectations and make sure the company’s culture is advanced enough to benefit from a 360° review system, it is important to understand what the system can and cannot do. By itself, a 360° review will do nothing. It will not improve performance, teamwork or communication, and without total confidentiality of results, it also will not lead to employee development.

What the system can do, however, is provide valuable input to a personal development plan. The development plan pulls together the 360° feedback along with other information, including the person’s career objectives, and new skills related to corporate directives (e.g., new safety initiatives, organization-wide training programs, etc.). The plan becomes a commitment to, as well as a roadmap for improvement. It also becomes a basis for dialogue between an employee and his or her supervisor.

If the system does not include some type of personal development plan and relies solely on the person receiving the feedback to act on the results, very little will change. Personal development is unfortunately a low priority in today’s business world because
people are too busy and many lack the knowledge necessary to improve themselves. When emphasized and regularly reviewed, however, the development plan adds credibility to the process and validates the importance of personal growth to the organization.

The 360° review is obviously a key input to the development plan because the
feedback comes from a person’s internal customers and suppliers. Organizations are becoming increasingly complex and success is heavily dependent on the quality of the interactions between people. As these interactions improve, an organization’s performance improves. By receiving and acting on the feedback from those with whom a
person interacts throughout the course of business, the interactions, and hence the
operation can improve.

THE NECESSARY ELEMENTS
There are several elements that are necessary to help create an environment in which a 360° system can succeed. Unless these elements are present, the process has little chance of aiding the improvement effort.

Confidentiality of Results The first requirement is to keep the results of the feedback completely confidential. This means that, unless a person decides to share the feedback with others, nobody has access to the information; not even the person’s supervisor. This is a difficult concept for many managers to accept because of a loss of perceived control. Some managers have become so accustomed to judging the people who work for them that they feel entitled to this type of information. Without complete confidentiality, however, the 360° process will experience many of the same problems as a traditional performance evaluation system. People will become defensive about the results and those providing the feedback will be less open and honest if they believe the exercise will result in negative consequences for the person receiving the information.

As with any activity, people will be more likely to willingly participate if the process results in positive action, but shy away from it if it leads to negative consequences. Basically, without complete confidentiality of results, a lot of energy will get directed toward things other than improvement.

A common concern about keeping feedback confidential relates to a lack of documentation for protection against dismissal-related lawsuits. The objective of a 360° system, however, is improvement. It is not a tool to fire people. Documenting a problem with an employee needs to happen when the problem occurs rather than waiting until the next review, which may not occur for several months later. This, along with the high level of subjectivity involved in performance evaluations, and the fact that people often
use evaluations to document general issues rather than specific instances of problems, makes them virtually useless in defending the company against lawsuits anyway. In a survey of labor attorneys reported by Tom Coens and Mary Jenkins[3], it was found that 7 out of 10 attorneys did not find performance appraisals beneficial in defending companies against wrongful discharge suits. It should also be noted that “problem” employees generally result from ineffective hiring practices, poor leadership, or both.

Customer Focus A second element of an effective 360° process is a customer focus throughout the organization. This means that everyone understands their role in serving customers, both inside and outside of the organization. Without a customer focus, people will direct their efforts toward satisfying the needs of the boss rather than those of the customer. This will cause the feedback received from internal customers to be ignored (or reduced in importance), resulting in frustration and an overall lack of interest in the 360° process, and a lack of improvement activity.

Maturity & Teamwork Another vital element of an effective 360° system is a high level of maturity and teamwork throughout the organization. If there is internal competition and frequent conflict between people and teams, the feedback will tend to be more negative and personal than constructive. To be useful for improvement, the feedback needs to be actionable by the person. The more negative and personal the information, the less the person will be able to identify specific steps to be taken to improve.

Careful Selection of Respondents To prevent 360° overload within the organization, the respondent group needs to include a sampling of the subject’s internal customers, rather than everyone with whom the person interacts.

There are many organizations that utilize the process by having the entire management team provide feedback to each other. This practice becomes extremely burdensome for people who are already overloaded and turns people off of the process.

To keep the time drain on people to a minimum, nobody should be selected to provide feedback to more than three other people during a given period of time. The only exception, of course, is a manager who is required to provide feedback to everyone on his or her team, regardless of the number of people involved (the feedback exercises need to be staggered, if necessary, to keep the process from overloading the manager).

Depending on the size of the organization, the HR department may need to get involved to keep anyone from being selected for more than three assessments. If managers are not willing to take the time necessary to plan the selection activity, it is better not to embark on the 360° process at all.

Coaching and Guidance The final element necessary for success in the process is the ability to understand the feedback and provide guidance to people in the development of an improvement plan. Although it sounds basic, there are many companies that focus so heavily on implementing the surveys that they don’t know what to do to help people act on the results. When this happens, the unfortunate result is a lot of money and time spent on a tool that provides no value to the organization.

Taking the time to assess the organization’s readiness for a 360° system before attempting implementation can save the company a lot of time, money and frustration. It
is also important to understand that, like many of the tools used in an organizational development process, a 360° process cannot by itself drive improvement. When
implemented correctly in an environment where improvement is part of the culture and driven by the organization’s leaders, however, the process can help people better understand who their internal customers are, what they want, and what they need to do to better contribute to the organization’s success.

REFERENCES
[1] Deming, W. Edwards, The New Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology—Center for Advanced Engineering Study, Cambridge, MA, 1993.
[2] Deming, W. Edwards, Out of the Crisis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Center for Advanced Engineering Study, Cambridge, MA, 1982.
[3] Coens, Tom and Jenkins, Mary, Say Goodbye to the Performance Review: Why Dr. Deming Was Right All Along, The Human Element, Human Development and Leadership Division of the American Society for Quality, Fall 2001.
Stocker, Gregg, Avoiding the Corporate Death Spiral: Recognizing & Eliminating the Signs of Decline, Quality Press, Milwaukee, WI, 2006.