churchill, roosevelt, stalin, performance review, Toby Elwin, blog

3 performance review politics that always trump merit

Politics trumps those who have shown reliable, merit-based performance.

When rewards are given to those with little merit, but through a host of politics such as cronyism, parochialism, and kleptocracy engagement is sabotagued and have little hope to achieve true engagement.

Merit-based performance would focus on the employee’s behavior that exemplifies excellence or the employee’s behavior that needs attention or improvement. When cronyism, kleptocracy, and parochialism gang up meritocracy has no chance.

tasmanian devil, strategic plan, Toby Elwin, blog

The devil in the details — the strategic plan

I find people have a tendency to become too involved too quickly with tactics. Tactics include what to buy, what to build, what to move. Strategy is why build, why buy, why move.

Much of your organization is involved in the detail of execution, it is illogical they are not strategically aligned. When your team discovers tactics they deliver align to organization goals there is clear purpose in what they do.

Purpose provides motivation.

The meat of the strategic planning process is the goals-objectives-actions value chain. People may have other definitions for goals, objectives, and actions, and bristle at the rigidity of the definitions, however, a single use for each term will remove interpretation and confusion.