Leadership Laboratory
- Leadership Lab: Management Competencies
Situational Awareness Advice for Security Managers - February 4th, 2008
Tenet Nosce - January 29th, 2008
Using Key Competencies to Manage Career Development and Direction - May 30th, 2008
The Meeting before the Meeting - September 17th, 2008
Leadership in a Technical Role - September 17th, 2008
Motivation Mistakes Inexperienced Leaders Make and How to Avoid Making Them - March 10th, 2008
Improve the performance of a project with a good start - January 11th, 2008
Project Management for Security Managers: Develop a Plan - January 29th, 2008
Resolving Performance Issues Caused by Lack of Skill or Ability - December 24th, 2007
Living Life on Purpose - Personal Branding - Updated September 6th, 2007
Positional and Personal Authority - Updated September 6th, 2007
Cross-training: A Case Study - July 27th, 2007
How to "Pushback" - July 17th, 2007
Should I Apply for this Middle Management Position? - Updated June 13th, 2007
Groups in Conflict: How to Manage their Relationship - June 8th, 2007
Creating the Next Generation of Cyber Security Leaders - May 8th, 2007
How To Budget Time - February 8th, 2007
The Security Manager and Business Situational Awareness - January 29th, 2007
How to Address Shortcomings in Employee Evaluations - January 1st, 2007
Conducting an Exit Interview - March 22nd, 2007
Measuring Employee Performance - November 14th, 2006
Coaching to Improve Performance - March 12th, 2007
Measuring Employee Performance
November 14th, 2006
By Stephen Northcutt
Summary:
Forward looking organizations can use the IT compensation associated
with quarterly performance reviews to shape the IT staff's knowledge,
skills and abilities and help technical employees develop the hot
skills needed to leverage technology accelerators.
Performance reviews can appear to be a waste of time for both employees and managers. Managers struggle to use the process as an effective means of holding poor performers accountable as well as give proper credit to the finest achievers. Those who measure performance well have the advantage of tuning employee development and encouraging employees by helping them understand how their contributions matter to the success of their organization. Any institution significantly impacted by technology will benefit from having the right talent to leverage technology accelerators for a business advantage. This talent is defined by knowledge skills and abilities which are, at times, measured by certifications or assessments. The performance review and future planning practice is a wonderful opportunity for documenting a dialog between employer and employee regarding the needs of the organization. The goal of the whole process is to enable better business results for the organization and all of its contributors. Anything less makes the time it requires a poor investment. The following objectives are best suited to support better business execution:
- Identify the "A" performers, the people who have an impact on the organization and can become leaders in the future
- Weed out poor performers
- Establish the objectives for execution on an individual basis
- Map out personal development in line with the organization's future needs on an ongoing basis
Performance objectives, hot skills and certifications each play a role in the review process for organizations seeking to improve. Having identified the purpose of the review, we can articulate how to use and tune the process. Please note the list breaks down into two sections. The first three seem to be "looking back", hence the title "quarterly review" or "yearly review". The last two are forward looking. Many find discussing the past and future at the same time to be disconcerting; the focus or priority tends to swing one way or another. A good tip is to organize the document such that the past, the review of work done over the stated time frame is clearly and visually separated from future objectives.
Ideally, the review process should consider achievement at three levels: the person, the group they belong to, and the organization as a whole. Individual employees need to know how they can develop into better contributors. The organization's HR group needs to understand the Hot skills (new skills needed to take advantage of technology) and critical IT certifications that demonstrate employees have mastered skills. They, in turn, can coach managers regarding future needs. The book, Execution by Bossidy and Ram, mention the turnaround at EDS by Dick Brown. He renamed HR to "Leadership and Change Management" to reflect their role in forging the future of the organization. We need to give managers an insight into the organization's future needs and encourage them to incorporate that knowledge in the review process.
What are the future trends in terms of technology in IT and IT Security, what are the decisions the organization will need to make and what are the skills needed to implement the decisions? The book Good to Great by Jim Collins, a study of the long term best performing companies in industry, found they all understood technology accelerators. When used correctly, technology becomes an accelerator of momentum. The two main sources for such future trend information are Gartner and now, the SANS Future Vision and Decisions Summit:
http://www.sans.org/visionsdecisions07/
Most organizations do not take the opportunity to give employees guidance as to their future personal development or to reward Hot skills. A study of 2401 employees show that only 6.4 receive skills pay and 55% of surveyed employees never heard of Hot IT and IT Security Skills. However, companies do commonly give premium pay for certifications.
In general what are the differences between skills, certificates/assessments and certifications? Skill is the knowledge and ability to accomplish a task. We use certificates and assessments to verify such knowledge and ability. If you have ever posted a help wanted ad that specified mastery of Microsoft Office you know the applicants often have a different definition of mastery than you do. To narrow the field, many employers ask for a certificate, achievement or turn to assessment companies. One company with assessments for a large number of IT related tasks is Brainbench. If you need IT Security Skills consider SANS/GIAC STAR:
http://www.sans.org/staysharp/about.phpA certification is more rigorous. It should start with a Job Task Analysis and may cover one or more skills. There are a large number of IT skills, courses and certifications, but in IT security the market leaders are the ISC2 CISSP, and the GIAC family of certifications, www.giac.org.
How often should performance reviews or future objectives meetings occur? Certainly a year is too long for either review or planning. Can you remember where you were a year ago and what you were doing? Organizations using a one year cycle are pretty much going through a paperwork exercise.
Quarterly is a better interval. It costs more in terms of management's time, but it has the possibility of meeting the goal of improved business execution. However, even a quarter is a longer period of time than a manager can accurately remember the specifics of performance. One powerful tool to enhance a review is to encourage employees to state their objectives for the coming week in their status report. It takes effort to list what you are going to do the next week and introduces accountability. Should employees backslide, they suddenly quit writing their objectives, and have to be reminded. It serves as a great tool for putting quarterly objectives together.
Everything of value takes effort. Take the time to map out future talent needs for your organization and incorporate that Hot Skills information into your quarterly objective reviews. Your employees can develop themselves to better serve the organization's needs by leveraging technology accelerators. This is a sure fire method for improving business execution and helping your organization be the best in the world at what you do.
References:
"What's to Be Done About Performance Reviews?" Published: November 3, 2006, Harvard Business School - Working Knowledge
By Jim Heskett
Don't Redesign Your Company's Performance Appraisal System, Scrap It!
ByFred Nickols
http://home.att.net/~nickols/scrap_it.htm
www.isc2.org
Execution by Bossidy and Charan, ISBN 0-609-61057-0
Good to Great by Jim Collins, ISBN 0-06-662099-6