Check the System Before the Person

Why many performance problems are system problems in disguise

Part four of four: Internal Communications for Engagement and Growth

Some years ago I was running a session with a team about giving and receiving feedback. One woman, who had been with the organisation about a year, shared something that has stayed with me ever since.

She had recently had her first annual review, eleven months in. Up to that point she believed she was doing a great job. She loved the place. The review was largely positive, but there was one area where she was told she wasn’t performing well.

She described feeling devastated, humiliated and ashamed. Not because of the feedback itself, but because nobody had thought to mention it to her for eleven months.

It was brave of her to say it out loud, and that team learned a great deal from it. In my experience, that is rare. Most people don’t say it. They leave, and they tell you they got a better opportunity.

We avoid these conversations because we care

We don’t avoid difficult conversations because we don’t care. We avoid them because we care too much, and we don’t quite know where to begin.

It comes from not wanting to upset someone, not wanting to damage a relationship or a fear of making the situation worse.

Protecting people from difficult feedback isn’t kindness. It is a disservice: to them, because they never get the chance to improve; to the team, who see it and draw their own conclusions about what is acceptable around here; and to you, because you carry the weight of it.

The personality clash that wasn’t

A client came to me asking for help with what he described as a personality clash between two of his people.

We had worked together before. On that earlier piece of work we had agreed a set of changes to the organisational system: roles and responsibilities, processes, decision rights –  the structural things that tell people who does what and how decisions get made.

When I explored the situation with him, it emerged that none of it had been put in place. Nothing had changed. The pressure had simply kept building until two people blew up at each other. And now, they were the problem.

I wasn’t willing to work on the basis that those two people were the problem, and saying so opened a much more useful conversation with the owner-manager about what was getting in the way of him making the structural changes. That was where the work was, and there was learning in it for him about his own style. We did come back to how the team worked together, how they communicated and how they gave and received feedback but only once the root of it had been dealt with.

60-30-10 rule

There is good research behind this. Hackman and Wageman’s work on team effectiveness found that around 60% of how well a team performs comes down to how it is designed – roles, responsibilities, processes, systems. About 30% comes from how it is launched, which is the communication and education piece. Only about 10% comes from coaching once the team is up and running.

Most performance problems are system problems in disguise: unclear roles, a process that doesn’t work, a handover nobody explained. Fix those first and the difficult conversation often gets smaller or disappears altogether.

It is worth noticing how often a launch happens in a small business. A new person’s first week. A new rota. A second site. A change of manager. Each one arrives with a pile of assumptions that nobody has aired. Something as simple as a team charter, revisited whenever things change, does that work. An email announcing the change does not.

And there is a feelings side to this too. Being blamed for a broken process is one of the fastest ways to lose a good person.

A simple way in

When you do need to have the conversation, remember it is a dialogue, not a speech.

Start by saying why: State your good intention first, because it lowers defences. “My intention is to get our reporting back on track, because it’s affecting the business in this way.”

Then describe what you have actually seen or heard: “The last three reports came in after the deadline”, not “you’re unreliable”. Facts, not labels.

Then ask and listen: “What’s going on from your side?” Listen for the facts and for the feelings, and summarise back so the person knows they have been heard. Very often what you hear here changes the picture entirely: the reports are late because information isn’t arriving from somewhere else. Now you are solving the real problem together.

Then agree what happens next: what will be done, by when, and by whom.

Four things to try. Pick one.

• Ask before you tell. In your next conversation, ask for their view before you give yours.
• Check how it landed. End important conversations with: what are you taking from this, and how does it sit with you?
• Name one contribution a week, specifically. Building a bank of positive feedback makes harder feedback much easier to hear, and it shows people you value them. Don’t assume they know.
• Have the one conversation you have been putting off. This week, not next month. Prepare for it rather than diving in.

Pick one. One habit changed consistently does more than four tried for a week.

Where this series started

Engagement isn’t a number on a survey. Engagement is a feeling.

Technology will keep changing. People will keep having feelings about what they hear, and about how they hear it. So if you want to know how engaged your people are, notice how they are feeling and the quickest way to find that out is to ask them.

If you would like to go further into this, I have written elsewhere about the feedback gap, and why good intentions aren’t enough. You will find it in the resources section of koiconsulting.ie: The Feedback Gap – Why Good Intentions Aren’t Enough – Koi Consulting

This series is based on a session delivered for the Dungarvan & West Waterford Chamber Communications Series, sponsored by Local Enterprise Office Waterford.