Emirates Airlines nightmare

We talked about the three C's in the last blog.

Brands must deliver.

I have enjoyed travelling Emirates Airlines in the past but today was a nightmare. Growth creates challenges. You cut corners. I guess that's what happened today. The crew forgot to serve me lunch for 4 hours. No regrets, no apologies. Can you believe it it was the first time in my life I was served a quarter cup of mango juice with the promise she will return. She did not till I asked her two hours later. Yet, she did not say sorry.

Pretty cabin crew but does that help deliver the brand. I doubt they understood the vision and mission of the airline or they were engaged. All that they told me in excuse was the new 777 Boeing aircraft was too big 340 passengers and “boy, it was full.’ They regret the flight was full.

Lucky I had biscuits with me to ensure I did not die of starvation. Even if I had I do not think the crew would have minded that. They were just least bothered.

Service recovery was even worse - I was given a bag with a chocolate box opened, razor, comb, toilet soap, sewing kit. Obviously you know that I did not take the bag.

It WAS truly a great airline that served customers well. It was certainly the opposite today..

I hope they recognize that growth does not mean cutting on the quality of recruitment, training or service.

The 3 C's of Brands

I read the article in the Research World - kind courtesy of my Saudi colleague Dr. Abdul Hai. The artilce talks about:

• The Culture - the internal culture of an organisation,
• The Community - how you engage them, and
• The Commercial - the primary focus of brands.

The new world is about managing all three concepts.

Inclusiveness

I happened to work with a CEO of a major Insurance company in Malaysia, who happens to be a good friend too. 

His Secretary looked Chinese but the name sounded Malay. My colleague and I asked her if she was Malay and her answer shamed us. 

She responded: I am a Malaysian and a human being.

Her ability to look beyond race and at how we can promote the value of the human spirit stumped me. While she was an ethnic Malay, my colleague was Chinese and I was Indian, her ability to reflect human values even though she was young thrilled me. There is still goodness left in this world. 

I learned so much about values from this young lady.

Making Appraisals work for you

Three Objectives

Let us review what performance management is designed to do.  The principle of such a business process has three objectives: 

Performance Planning & Alignment:

First, to develop and align goals that is essential to implement business strategy. This must link with the organizational structure and positions. The creation of a position is not without a reason. Organizational structure is nothing but a series of relationships/positions designed to successfully implement strategy.

Second, to create consistent goals which align employees with managers and business units and align these goals with the organization’s overall priorities?  These goals also help employees themselves stay focused.

Coaching and development: 

This process enables a structured process where managers are able to provide coaching and development. This can be supported by Learning & Development organization, leadership development, and other organizational developmental processes in the organization.

Employee evaluation: 

This process helps to create standardized and equitable ratings and rankings to facilitate compensation decisions, promotions, succession planning, and talent management

Do Performance Appraisals work?

Ask a couple of your peers their satisfaction levels with a performance evaluation or review? It is very likely that they will express their dissatisfaction. Most of us know that performance appraisals do not work very well. Research indicates only less than 35% of organisations have an enterprise wide programme. Less than a similar number are happy with the process. Even fewer of the C level executives find it useful. It is more of a yearly paper exercise f not implemented properly.

Which of the above three objectives is the most important and how do you design a process that works? 

Coaching for Competency development

In our 30 year experience working with some of the most successful organizations, we have had the opportunity of studying best practices. Research and practice clearly indicate the business process that makes an immediate impact on business and generates far greater returns on investment is when coaching for competency development takes precedence over the evaluation piece. Consider the impact of the following five processes in performance management.

 

Coaching:

 

The number one highest impact process for organizations is coaching.  The impact of coaching is overwhelming with a 150% greater return than performance assessment and almost a 200% greater return than “pay-for-performance” processes.  

 

Competency frameworks:

 

The number two highest impact process for organizations is in developing high-value, unique, and job-aligned competencies. When an organization has a competency framework in place and that is maintained regularly, the impact grows by quantum leaps. The process of identifying critical competencies, coaching individuals to develop the competencies and then using these competencies to assess and improve performance clearly has very high value. This was the second ranked high-impact process in performance management.

 

Goal development and goal alignment:

 

The number three highest impact process is goal development and goal alignment. The need to gain mutual agreement between the manager and the subordinate on work plans and aligning employees with organizational goals is critical.

 

Development Planning

 

The number four highest-impact process in performance management is development planning. The need for creating clear and consistent development plans such as individual development plans are very important.

 

 

 

 

Performance evaluations

 

Performance evaluations and linking compensation to performance ratings were deemed important for talent management. They were seen as an important but far below the other four above. This was often a sore spot as the dissatisfaction mostly came from the fairness and quality of evaluations.

 

The focus

Most organizations focus on Performance evaluations. The appraisal and the linkage to compensation were viewed as most important as it gave the Human Resources department significant importance and because it is a compliance-related issue. It is often said it is common sense that the appraisal is the most important. Respectable authors and researchers all are unanimous in their opinion that in fact the other four are far more important if you want the performance management process to drive business impact. I had echoed similar views in my book Performance Management & Measurement: The Asian Context.

 Viewing performance management as management

 

If we institutionalize performance management as part of everyday management, it does not become as an annual chore.  You design a situation where performance is managed everyday and coaching for competency development becomes part of the daily job. You will be able to shape the behaviors and activities of leaders, managers, and employees by design and not by chance.

 

The Jack Welch General Electric Model

 

Jack Welch of General Electric popularized the concept of the A players and the bottom 10% to fit with his business strategy of being Number 1 or 2 in every business. If not, then fix it, sell it or close it. To align to this business goal, performance evaluations were made very stringent and the bottom 10% very year were replaced. Jack Welch always communicated the view that it is better for them and GE that the bottom 10% find other opportunities that suit them best.  The top 20, middle 70 and bottom 10 model, establishes strict rules to “fire the bottom 10%” in every workgroup. 

 

From the number of speeches and seminars you get to hear that this strategy worked very well for the company. Also, not to forget that General Electric was praised for giving employees the best learning opportunities. They were hailed as the CEO factory of the United States of America. However, will this very competitive model of forced ratings to differentiate performance work for your organization?

 

While this model worked very well for General Electric, the question we have to ask is will it work for your organization.

 

The balanced score card

 

The huge rush towards the balanced score card approach to ensure goal development and alignment across the four parameters of financial, customer, internal process and learning through strategy mapping is very good. The model has been hailed as a great way to implement strategy. However, will you be able to mine the data needed to generate the first report so essential for managing performance. Will you be able to manage this tedious process?

 

While the Balanced Score Card has worked very well for some organizations, the question we have to ask is will it work for your organization.

 

HRDPower from SMR HRT

I would like to propose an alternative approach based on Coaching for Competency Development, given our consulting experiences and experience in implementing HRDPower, a software tool. While I will cover this in my next article, there is one message that I like to leave behind for you.

Make sure the performance management process that you choose makes the highest impact on your business. That is the only way you can make performance appraisals work and add value for you. Make the software work for you. Do not compromise your programme to suit the software.

Making Performance Appraisals work for you

Performance Appraisals do not work. That seems to be the conclusion of many authors including Deming and Drucker. They have proposed various alternatives around the concept to make it work.

During the last few years, we have studied the utilization of the various performance management programmes used by organizations and the software programmes available. There is little doubt that organizations struggle to implement a precise process which will best reflect their organization’s goals, culture, and desired management style. Most organizations have difficulty with the performance management programme or the software. This leads to organizations designing a process around the system features and capabilities.

The rapid growth of performance management off the shelf software is creating quite a bit of difficulty for organizations. Research organizations studying HR systems believe a major shift is taking place. While enterprise systems are being gradually edged out because of the availability of software as a service, the main focus today seems to hinge on making the performance appraisal relevant for an organization.

Seven core processes

Performance management software systems revolve around automating the seven core processes which organizations use: 

1.    Goal development (also known as key performance indicators or KPI; sometimes also confused with objectives),

2.    Goal alignment,

3.    Self-assessment,

4.    Superior assessment,

5.    360 assessment,

6.    Competency development, and

7.    Development planning. 

Unfortunately, they don’t really help organizations decide how the performance appraisal process itself will work. This is ultimately the most important issue of all.

We will discuss this in our next post.

FUN Learning

Is the use of FUN something that trainers, facilitators or learning specialists can avoid without affecting learning results? Research shows us that it is highly unlikely for great learning results when the delivery is devoid of FUN.

In my 30 over years of experience in delivering sessions and attending training, I have found the use of FUN to be a very powerful tool to gain learner attention, promote participation and accelerate retention. The resistance towards the use of FUN tools maybe largely attributed towards the stereotyped perceptions of FUN. Many years ago, the late Dr. Surjit Singh, a Malaysian trainer differentiated the use of FUN and being funny in a jovial manner. Rather than share the lengthy research background, suffice to say for now, we can certainly say the use of FUN is a purpose driven activity; being funny is largely trivia without a purpose, when taken in the context of learning. How many times have we heard participants murmuring that while the trainer is a content expert and is very knowledgeable, the sessions are very hard to pay attention to? We have also heard learners grumbling about all funny activities and jokes without any relevance to content.

I will continue in my next blog message.

Can we compete?

This morning I had the opportunity to climb the famous Hindu temple Batu Caves. Close to 280 steps. It was a wonderful experience. I had not climbed the Batu Caves for the last 5 years. As with customary Hindu practice, we had gone there as a family to fulfill a prayer. The interesting part was when we climbed down the 280 steps; to quench our thirst, we decided to have a few Cokes at the local store. As we found no straws, we asked the customer service operator if we could have one and he just said “figure it out yourself, it should be somewhere there." 

My wife had recently visited India. Her goal was to buy a handicraft piece in the government authorized handicraft emporium. She paid with her Malaysian credit card.It has taken three long months and we have still not received the handicraft piece.  Apparently, this evening's phone call revealed that they have just about got the government permission to ship the handicraft piece. The customary answer to a frustrating question was “these things take time Madam." 

Compare it with my visit to China. I had bought two water features for the office. The service representative called me at every stage of the shipping process and we received the shipment within four weeks. And, on my next trip to China, I visited the shop; I was amazed to be greeted by name by the Chinese representative who spoke only a few words of English. 

I am a Malaysian of Indian origin and I just can’t stop being marveled by the competitiveness of the Chinese.  

What is the missing competency link? What is that we others are missing that the Chinese seem to do with ease? 

Can we ever compete with the fierce competitiveness of the mainland Chinese? 

Remember the saying: 

Every morning, a gazelle wakes up, ready to run fast to escape being eaten up by the tiger. 

Every morning, a tiger gets up, ready to run fast to hunt for food. 

It does not matter if you are a gazelle or a tiger, either way you just got to run fast.