I think you missed the point!

I guess it could be a translation of which is the chicken and which is the egg? Dilbert has been so on point!

So Superbowl XLVII is over. And a lot of people are gonna blame the power outage for the result.

Some will blame Beyonce’ for her ability to drain the power from the stadium that they believe lead to the end result.

Some will blame the psychology that took place as a result of the 87 minute break in between the beginning of half-time and the beginning of the 2nd half.

However, no one should blame any of this on those factors. The only blame resides on the pure performance or lack of performance of the players in this game.

But like I said tonight: “If I was at work & the lights suddenly went out and came back on, I doubt anyone would accept the excuse of me not being able to perform because of it! #SuperBowl #NoExcuses #SuckItUp”

NOW GET BACK TO WORK!

How often do you see this happen? Too often huh! But let’s remember one thing that is too prevelent within todays work environments but many seem to outright ignore or do not have the strength to face…

“More often poor performance is less about the performance itself and more about how the unrealistic demands and expectations that are placed on people within their roles actually deter them from being better performers!”

Let’s all do a better job of aligning the right skills for the right roles and the right people to the right jobs.

Performance would be so much better!

Poor performance is more often a result of unclear expectations rather than the performance itself!

— Benjamin McCall (@BenjaminMcCall) June 28, 2012

Too often I have seen managers and executives cop out on how they measure and decide on how their employees are performing. Too often the decision made by managers when they give employee evaluations, have one on ones, and face difficult confrontations is faulty.

Faulty why? Because they, we, by human nature, somehow believe that when someone does not perform or is seen as ineffective in their role that we did everything right and they did much wrong.

We feel we give adequate instruction. That the direction we lay out is clear. However, more often it is not.

Meetings gone wrong

I have been in meetings that have been less about decision making and clarifying who will be responsible for action and far more around a brainstorm of talk that, by the end of that meeting, people leave without any clear direction or focused idea on who is to do what.

Ever felt this way: “Ok, so I still have no idea what I am supposed to do and even more so why was I even involved in that meeting? I’ll just go back to my desk and do the work that I was doing.”

My advice: Make a list-

Make a list of specific actions that you would like accomplished for your employees. But they’re adults you say. I hired them to do the job and I am no babysitter you say. And I agree. We are not meant to be babysitters.

But if you are the type of boss that has a meeting with one agenda item to complete and then after the meeting your employees leave the meeting with a brain fart of tasks that they did not expect nor did you provide any specific direction, expectation or guidance on what is to be done… then you don’t need to babysit, what you need to do is give them a picture of what is expected.

Clear expectations will be a better predictor with a possible result in higher performance!

Your thoughts?

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