By: KHA Consulting Team
The following is part 19 of a multi-part series on The KHA Way, KHA Management Consulting’s Integrated Service Offering. This blog series includes the benefits of using KHA Management Consulting Services and the components included.
Previously, we discussed two different facets of Process Alignment: Processes and Procedures and departmental KPIs. In this post, we will look more toward the individual and identify why it is important that every employee knows what they are measured on. Also, we will discuss why it is important that everybody has a number they need to target and a clear path forward to how they should improve those numbers.
Gino Wickman, in his book ‘Traction’ proports that ‘Every individual has a number’ and they must strive to reach that number. At the end of each period, they will be given a rating of simply meet or not meet. At KHA, we also believe that every individual should have clear, concise, and measurable metrics. This does a couple things. One, it provides objective clarity as to what the individual is responsible for controlling. Second, it sets criteria well in advance for whether an individual was a successful employee or not.
Being able to determine if an employee was successful at his/or her role during a performance review is crucial. It allows you to assess their performance from an unbiased position. Ultimately, if an employee is not performing, the complicated decision of what to do with the employee, either retain or terminate, will have to be made. If each metric comes with a trajectory, or an improvement path, this decision can be relatively easy. If somebody had a one-off period where they missed their goal, that should be evident in the next period, if their performance improved, or otherwise further decreased.
Tracking, and improving upon, individual performance is at its core how businesses improve over time. If every single employee in an organization improved their performance each period by 1 percent, then your organizational improvement would be astronomical.
By clearly defining and tracking individual metrics, you will strongly encourage, if not mandate that your employees have ownership in their performance, and cumulatively the performance of the organization as a whole.
To ensure that each person’s individual metric continues to be improved upon, stay tuned for our next post regarding ‘Processes and Procedures’ where we will discuss why it is crucial to have every role’s responsibilities and actions clearly documented.
At KHA Management Consultants, we work with mid-market industry leaders to identify what makes the organization, its stakeholders, and its’ employees tick. We facilitate Process Alignment with your organization’s key constituents to ensure buy-in, ownership, and a new way of thinking about the organization and its stakeholders amongst all levels. From a resource perspective, we primarily use our unmatched experience but also tap into the top-level resources such as those made available by Harvard Business Review, relevant strategic management authors, and MentorPlus. Some of those materials, frameworks, and lessons have been used in authoring this series.
KHA Management Consultants, the consulting department of KHA Accountants, PLLC, based in Flower Mound, Texas, is always looking for opportunities to work with key clients ready to take their organization to the next level. If you have a desire to improve, take the first step toward success with the strategic management experts, and contact us at 972-221-2500.