Internal Structure Performance Management

We often tend to focus heavily on the structures and processes we use for the consumer-facing side of our business, but what’s equally important are the internal structures we put in place to ensure our company runs smoothly behind the scenes too. When you think of what goes on behind the curtain of your company, what comes to mind first?

Let me guess. The people pulling the levers and making stuff happen. Your team is an integral part of your business, and to make sure that business is booming, you need to find ways tomonitor the needs and performance of the people behind it.

When we talk about performance management, the goal is to find a way to measure and monitor the performance of our team that’s not just easy and effective, but consistent. 

I’ve come up with a really simple model to help you track the performance of the people on your team and I call it the T.A.R.E Method

To kick things off, we need to acknowledge the countless ways that performance might be measured. The first part of the T.A.R.E Method is taking a targeted approach that’s specific to each individual role within your business.

You might think to yourself, People need to step up and my answer to that thought is To what? Get specific about the type of performance you want to see and who you need to see it from. Identify each role and its goals for achievement with specific outcomes you want to see. You may even want to include timelines for each desired outcome.

The second part of this method deals with accountability. As a business owner or manager, there are two types of strategies you need to use to maintain accountability for each of your team members. First, you need a checklist, and second, you need a report.

These two tactics make it really easy to train people in their roles, monitor their accountability using specific performance criteria, and eventually pass their role onto someone else when they get promoted. They also provide each employee with a clear list of expectations and a way to monitor their own progress.

Gone are the days of annual reviews. If we really want to improve performance, we need to check in at regular intervals and monitor changes.

This leads us to the third part of the T.A.R.E Method–the review. To improve performance, we need to be able to review it. The best way to do this is to set times, structures, and scorecards for each of your employees. Getting specific with performance reviews means you’ll get specific feedback and a true understanding of how your team is running. If you offer each employee a“score card” of some sort during their review, it gives them an easy way to identify their current performance and expand on any strengths and weaknesses.

Consider making each performance review all about scaling questions to which your employees can respond with a number from 1-5.

The final part of my tried-and-true method of monitoring internal performance is all about education. This is where we often get led astray. Don’t be fooled into thinking your employees can read your mind. As a leader, it’s up to you to remind your team members of their roles and responsibilities and monitor their proficiency.

You may think that because you onboarded someone when you hired them, they know everything they need to know about their role. Wrong. Just because you’ve explained something, doesn’t mean they really get it.

This could be due to many different reasons. For starters, you might have the wrong person in the role. You might also not have done a good enough job explaining something.

There are countless reasons someone might simply not understand part of their role, but I can guarantee that most often, it’s because somewhere along the line we haven’t checked into seeing their proficiency in the role.

Training can easily become an unhealthy checklist, thinking that we’ve done all we need to do because we’ve ticked boxes like running through their job description and introducing them to our software. Don’t let this happen (or continue to happen) within your business. Be proactive in improving the performance of your business and implement the T.A.R.E Method.