May you always be blessed and know the satisfaction of being “workmen worthy of your hire” (Matthew 10:10).

No book on Performance Management System (PMS) and no corporate treatise on the subject can match this crisp and pithy saying of Saint Peter on performance.

I recommend that it should be the tagline of every decent book on PMS.

Effective organizations are not build merely on investment and returns but more on the quality of the workforce, its commitment to the organizational goals and investments made to attract train, and retain superior human capital.

Influencing employees to alter their performance is the toughest but most valuable leadership challenge of all.
The return on an investment in performance management is high—it is worth the time and resources that it may cost.

Geary Rummler, the founder and chairman of the Performance Design Lab, a Tucson-based research and consulting firm specializing in the design of performance systems for organizations in the United States and abroad, said, “Put a good person in a bad system,and the system will win every time.”

PERFORMANCE = ABILITY * EFFORT
WITHOUT ABILITY, THERE IS NO USE TO ADDRESS EFFORT

With more than twenty-five years of experience witnessing managers and supervisors succeed despite inept leadership, ill-formed human resource policies, and inadequate information and communication systems, I still vote for the good man in a bad system than all the bad men in a good system.

The good men succeeded because of their respect for others, their ingenuity in addressing problems, and mostly because of their unwavering optimism.

I have immense respect for the people who live day-to-day with dysfunctional management systems.

Without you needing a foundational knowledge of performance issues in today’s fast-paced work environment, any management will flounder. What does this individual need to make the workday more successful and worklife more joyful?

Here are eleven truisms related to performance; some of them are centuries old, but they are as true today as ever.

Truism 1: No one takes a job to fail She or he could be lacking one of these performance basics:

• Clarity regarding performance expectations

• A clear picture of what excellent performance looks like

• An understanding that there is a gap between her or his performance and the performance expectations

• Tools or needs such as knowledge, skill, motivation, workspace enhancement,or tactical coaching.