6th July 2015 Madrid, Spain
Three thoughts on ambition, hunger and impact
I spent a lot of March, April, May and June preparing, discussing, drafting, revising, finalising, submitting, quality controlling and validating staff performance appraisals. I reckon I was involved in well over 100. I know many of my colleagues will have worked on many, many more.
It’s important work so it has to be rigorous, transparent and fair. We, rightly, take it seriously. We have extensive processes in place to ensure this. But I think there is a risk, in any large, complex organisation, that the process can sometimes obscure the important things that lie beneath it.
My personal learning point after the past few months is to try to keep 3 simple principles in mind for the future: ambition, hunger and impact:
1. Objectives are about ambition: “what do I want to achieve in my job during this year?” That’s not “what do I normally do, day-to-day?”. I think the question to ask yourself at the start of the year is “where am I going to make a difference?” Be realistic. But don’t play it safe. Modest objectives don’t help you – they’ll only mean your job does not challenge, stimulate or develop you. And they certainly don’t help your organisation. I think good objectives should stretch you, push you outside your comfort zone.
2. Learning and Development is about your hunger: “how am I going to improve myself this year?” None of us can afford to stand still. Our ability to learn drives our improvements in our performance, in ourselves. Being aware of where we need to learn is fundamental to that. So having stretching learning targets for the coming year doesn’t mean you are weak. It shows strengths of self-awareness, commitment to improve and eagerness to contribute more. And the best learning plans really do follow the 70/20/10 framework. That’s 70% learning through experience;20%learning from others; and 10% learning through formal training.
3. Performance appraisals are about impact: “what difference did you make?” That’s what you did and how you did it. The how is as important as the what. Making a positive difference isn’t just about hitting targets. It’s about living the behaviours your organisation wants to nurture, showing respect to your colleagues, helping others deliver, developing yourself and seeing where you need to develop more. The best performance appraisals give a full and rounded picture of the officer. They look back at what they have done and forward to their future – which is where those ambitious objectives come in again……
I think our ambition should be to get as much life out of living as you possibly can, as much enjoyment, as much interest, as much experience, as much understanding. Not simply be what is generally called a success.
I am completely agree with your words specially the percentage graph you have mentioned in your blog & i am with the notion that we should always keeps our mind open and lets come good thoughts from all side and only work on that part whatever our heart say.
I like this structure a lot.
So often we get caught up in making objectives measurable that we not only end up measuring the wrong thing (just because it’s measurable), we end up creating the wrong objective, just so we can measure it!
I think it’s better to have an imperfect subjective measure that is at least trying to measure the right thing, than something objective and numeric, but focussed on the wrong thing.
When I train on this stuff, I talk about three principles of a great objective:
1, Is it motivating for the individual
2. Is it challenging – or maybe ambitious is a better word – for the individual
3. Does it add value for the organisation