Achieving learning outcomes of the module of Strategic performance management

Introduction

This study is basically focused on achieving learning outcomes of the module of Strategic performance management. Accordingly there are four learning outcomes and to achieve those there are separate tasks under each learning out come. So this assignment was also structured under the learning outcomes.

Learning outcome one is about setting performance targets to meet strategic objectives and it is mainly consisting with the areas of Links between team performance and strategic objectives, Evaluate tools and techniques available to set team performance targets, The value of team performance tools to Measure future team performance.

Learning Outcome two is about agreeing team performance targets to contribute to meeting strategic objectives including the areas of Determine required performance targets within teams against current performance, Individual commitment to team performance in achievement of organizational goals, Delegation, mentoring and coaching to the achievement of the organizational objectives, Evaluate a team performance plan to meet organizational objectives

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Learning Outcome three is about monitoring actions and activities defined to improve team performance including the area Assess the process for monitoring team performance and initiate changes where necessary, Evaluate team performance against agreed objectives, Evaluate the impact of the team performance in contributing to meeting strategic objectives.

Learning Outcome four is influencing and persuading skills to the dynamic and politics of personal interactions consisting influencing and persuading methodologies to gain the commitment of individuals to a course of action, the impact of individual dynamics, interests and organizational politics on securing the commitment of individuals to a course of action.

Learning Outcome 1

Links between Team Performance and Strategic Objectives

Performance management is a process that should continuously operate to manage the performance of individuals as well as the group. Teams are kind of groups, whereas all groups are not teams. Teams can be defined as ‘a small number of people with complementary skills, who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. From the definition itself we can identify team should be directed to a particular goal.

Managing team performance means managing the performance of group of people. These should provide a framework to help people operate, and to help them to help others to operate.

In the present competitive environment, all the employees of an organization have to get together to survive and succeed in achieving higher productivity levels that ensure its sustainability. Absence of such integration among the different functional teams and also the individuals can eventually lead to a collapse of the enterprise.

Corporate strategic objectives provide the starting point for business and departmental objectives. When achieving departmental objectives team performance is very important where as it long last with the strategic objectives. Why team performance is so important, in a team there are high level of mutual interaction and awareness which is responsible for powerful forces which cause the individual to behave sometimes rather differently from the way they behave on their own. It is important to achieving strategic objectives that these forces work for the organization and not against it.

Evaluate tools and techniques available to set team performance targets

Team performance targets can be mostly identify as work-related, referring to the results to be attained, or personal, taking the form of developmental objectives for individuals. But these objectives need to be defined and agreed. It is needed narrate to the overall purpose of the job and define performance areas – all the aspects of the job that contribute to achieving its on the whole purpose. Targets then need to be set for each performance area, for example, increase ‘sales by x per cent’, ‘reduce wastage by y per cent’

Traditionally, the word performance is often associated with an act of entertainment. As professionally involved in HR, our concern should be job related performance and the degree of accomplishing particular tasks, duties and responsibilities towards of achievement of organizational success. This entails many level of performance and will influence employee performance in a particular direction where each team will perform their duties to contribute towards the main objectives of the organization.

One method is that Team Performance Profile Questionnaire (TPPQ). This was found from the article of “Managing Team Performance: Unrealistic vision or attainable reality?” By Dick McCann & Richard Aldersea

Based on the Types of Work Wheel as shows below and the Types of Work Profile Questionnaire, a further profile questionnaire has to be developed specifically to measure team performance. This profile questionnaire is known as the Team Performance Profile Questionnaire (TPPQ) and is a 54-item multi-rater assessment which focuses objectively on assessing a team’s performance in terms of the nine team performance factors associated with high-performing teams.

(Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/human-resources-articles/factors-effecting-performance-of-employees-872435.html)

The value of team performance tools to Measure future team performance

Team performance tools enable to link team measures to organizational measures, Define team measurement points, Define the results which the team produces, Define results individuals produce to support the team, Create measures for each result, Set performance standards for each measure, Plan how to track the performance.

Through these types of analysis it will clearly show the present status of the team performance. Then organization can clearly predict the future performance. Because this guidance will help for Managers and supervisors responsible for the results of teams reporting to them, Members and leaders of work teams, Human resource personnel charged with helping teams define goals, Compensation professionals developing metrics for team compensation to predict and make precausionary approaches.

This will benefit to adapt to various kinds of teams, giving you options instead of a “one-size-fits-all” approach, performance measures increase the quality of employee measurement efforts and save the time, Techniques for measuring hard-to-measure functions like product design, research and development, and customer service enable customer satisfied with. The process join team and individual performance quantity to allow you to reward the team while coaching and rewarding the individuals who are helping or delaying the team, giving teams a tool to learn how to measure their own performance.

Learning Outcome 2

2.1 Determine required performance targets within teams against current performance

One technique is that measuring the team output. Following are some of the examples.

Achievement of objectives

Achievement against agreed standards of performance, which might be descriptions of excellent, good, satisfactory or poor performance

Behavior, measuring the extent to which individuals exhibit behaviors associated with performance such as respect for others, trust etc.

Specific instances of performance for example approvals for specific pieces of work

Another technique is that measuring the input. Following are some of the examples.

Competence

Skills and experience and the degree to which news skills are applied in the job

Prospective to develop and/or acquire new skills

Behaviors associated with developing and knowledge sharing

Communication skills

Another set of tools and techniques are there specifically to measure the team performance.

Individual contributions to the team through involvement in cross the team

Support for other individuals to achieve their objectives and participation in cross organization initiatives by providing timely input

Understanding of team role

Engagement scores

2.2 Individual commitment to team performance in achievement of organizational goals

According to Meredith Belbin (1981) has identified key types of individual commitments are needed inorder to achieve organizational goals. According it can be identified key roles within a team. It is not a must to play all the below mentioned roles by different individulas. At times one person can play more than one of roels in a team.

Chairman – clarified the group objectives and helps to identify the issues to be addressed. Has to be stable, dominant extroverts.

Shaper – An anxious, dominant extrovert who needs result for reassuarance and has a compulsary drive to get thing done.

Plant – A dominant introvert with a very high IQ, who is very good at coming up with original ideas and suggetions

Monitor Evaluator – A stable introvertered type of individual with a high IQ, who is good at dispassionate analysis of suggetions and options

Company Worker – A stabe, controlled individual, who turns decisions into managable tasks

Resource investigator – A dominant stable extrovert, who goes outside the group to obtain useful information and resources

Team worker – A stable extrovert who keeps the team together by supporting other members and helping to promote unity.

Completer/ Finisher – Typically an anxious introvert, who is inpatient and very concern with meeting deadlines

Expert – A technical person, if needed, to solve technically based problems.

It is very important to have the right balance of team roles for success in team performance.

2.3 Delegation, mentoring and coaching to the achievement of the organizational objectives

Delegation of tasks also important, because some leaders tend to keep all the tasks and also power with him like a autocratic leader, then with the time he or she will unable to complete the tasks or cannot achieve up to the standard. So it is needed to delegate the tasks among the group members.

Mentoring is defined as a part of the leaders role that has a leaning as its primary outcome. The bottam line is that a mentor is simply someone who helps someone used to learn something that would have otherwise being learned less well. More slowly or not at all. Coaching and councelling is very much a part of mentoring and cannot be isolated while coaching deal with the development of skills of the employee, councelling deal with effectively handling the problem wich affect employees in their day today work.

2.4 Evaluate a team performance plan to meet organizational objectives

Team performance plan plays a vital role in achieving organisational objectives. Team performance plan identifies the required outputs to achieve the organizational objectives. Without having a proper team performance plan it is difficult for an organization to meet the objectives of the organization. The team performance plan provides a proper framework for the organization to achieve the organizational objectives.

Learning Outcome 3

3.1 Assess the process for monitoring team performance and initiate changes where necessary

There are several ways and means which are used in monitoring team performance. Here to address the requirements of this study I have chosen an IT organization which is operating in UK namely Felida. Felida is a newly established IT organization and still in its business growing stage but has reached many horizons of the business in small period of a time.

The organization is totally depending on team work and accordingly they have identified group tasks for their employees and given team responsibilities for teams. Accordingly for this study the team of Soft ware developers has been taken to the consideration.

Accordingly the proves of monitoring team performance of Felida is as follows,

Set Team Objectives

Appoint a leader to the team

Give deadliness

Before monitoring the team performance of Felida the team work is given as above.

Accordingly the senior manager of IT and the Senior Manager HR is the responsible managers to monitor the team performance of the team of software developers. Felida has three way step in order to monitor team performance accordingly, the first step is,

Monitoring of performance in the first half of the duties assigned

Monitoring of Performance in the second half of the duties assigned

Monitoring of performance after completion of duties.

The first half of monitoring is done to assess whether the required team level of performance is achieving or to assess whether the team can work as a team and deliver the required outputs in the right time. In this stage if the management found that team is not performing up to the level mostly they change the team or provide mentoring for the team.

In the monitoring done in the second half of the work, they mostly assess whether they are close to reach the required deadlines and outputs as a team, in that if they seems to be fail the management directly involve and provide training and assistance to them.

The final monitoring is done for the future; this means by dong this they identify whether to form the particular tem in future or what changes should be done in the future. This is done totally for the wellbeing of the employees and as well as the organization in the future.

It seems that this process is an excellent method where the teams are monitored all the time, but as a whole the first monitoring may be an additional effort and time consuming thing for the mangers of the organization.

3.2 Evaluate team performance against agreed objectives

The objectives of the HR team of Felida have been described in this section. Accordingly the identified some objectives of the HR team is as follows,

To ensure that all employees are treated fairly of Felida

To ensure the effectiveness of employees in order to achieve deadlines of the organization.

Accordingly the HR team performance has been successful in last two years. The organizational success is the evidence for that, because according to the recent survey it was found that 97% of employees of Felida are satisfied about their job apart from that the growing success of the organization is the other evidence to show that the organization’s HR team has reached successfully their objectives.

Accordingly it can be mentioned that the organizational HR team performance has been achieved in order to the required objectives of the team.

3.3 Evaluate the impact of the team performance in contributing to meeting strategic objectives

The team performance has a major role in contributing to meet the strategic objectives. Team performance is the driven factor of any organization for organizational success. Accordingly the team performance acts as a main force to achieve strategic objectives of an organization.

The team performance is the predominant factor which creates an enthusiastic work environment for the employees. When there is a team established the employees get an additional non financial motive which will enhance their performance in order to achieve organizational strategic objectives. Further when the employees are working as a team the enthusiastic work environment provides and outstanding work culture for the employees which motivates then to work on in order to achieve organizational performance.

When there is teams established it is easy to assign the work duties for the employees rather than assigning work for the individuals. This means when outputs are assigning for the individual employees it is difficult to manger and monitor and it becomes more complex but when the duty is assigned for a team it is easy to evaluate their performance and working to the deadlines. Accordingly when team tasks assigned rather than individual tasks it is easy for to get work done and ultimately achieve organizational strategic objectives.

When teams are assigned the strategic objectives of the organization can be divided to the team, this means lets say there is a strategic objective of the organization to become a market leader in the market share of the product, at the same time the organization has strategic objective to become the more innovative in new product development. Accordingly to achieve the strategic objective to become a market leader in market share the organization can directly assign the task to the marketing team to facilitate to encourage the people to buy the particular product. As well to achieve the second strategic objective to be innovative and develop new products that task could be directly introduced to the research team of the organization.

Likewise the team performance acts as a main influential factor in achieving strategic objectives of the organization.

Learning Outcome 4

4.1 Determine influencing and persuading methodologies to gain the commitment of individuals to a course of action

There should be several influential and persuading methodologies to gain the commitment of individuals to a course of action. Basically these strategies should be addressing the short term and long term objectives of the employees and as well the short term and long term objectives of the organization.

Accordingly one of the main influencing methods is giving intensives to the employees; the team members can be persuaded by providing incentives to the team in order to the completion of the required objectives of the team. On the other hand the team members can be motivated through providing bonuses upon the completion of their team duties.

Apart from that one of main non financial motivate factor for the employees is providing the ‘we’ feeling within the team and as well as within the organization. This ensures that they are working in a team environment and within a one particular family it gives a mental motivation for the employees.

Also to influence employees to get work done another method can be identifies which very strict but highly influential in some critical situations. Which is enforcing the power where the organization and its management have through the means of labor laws of the country? In a critical situation where the employees doesn’t perform their duties for any other motives the management can use this method but not good to apply in many situations because it can course additional problems.

Apart from those to get work done employees can be rewarded through giving proper recognition for their work completed. In most of situation these non financial motivates acts very influentially in order to get the maximum value of employees.

Likewise there are several strategies that we can work on to get work doe from employees.

4.2 Discuss the impact of individual dynamics, interests and organizational politics on securing the commitment of individuals to a course of action

Individual dynamics and interest are highly required to get the commitment of individuals. If the employees are not dynamic in an organization it is difficult to ensure organizational success because a required course of action could not be get done.

Accordingly there are two types of individual dynamic and interest one is the inborn talents and skills of the employees and the other one is the motivate environment of the organization to obtain individual dynamics and interest.

Anyway this individual dynamics has a strong impact for organizational success because Human Resource is the most influential and drive factor of an organization which drives the successfulness on any organization. Accordingly if the HR or the dynamics of the individual are not effective organization cannot be successful.

Any organization should maintain some organizational politics on securing the commitment of individuals to a course of action. These organizational politics acts as the organizational framework in order to achieve organizational objectives.

The organizational politics doesn’t have to be always very democratic it should maintain some feature of autocratic because democracy in an organization does not work all time.

Likewise the organization should maintain their own culture through having a organizational politics.

Conclusion

This study is totally describes about strategic performance management. This study assess several and wide area of strategic performance management and provides a better framework for the students to come out with a strong understanding in the subject area.

According to the first learning outcome of the study which understands how to set performance targets to meet strategic objectives. Accordingly under that learning outcome it has been analysed the links between team performance and strategic objectives, tools and techniques available to set team performance targets and the value of team performance tools to Measure future team performance.

According to the second learning outcome of the study which is become able to agree team performance targets to contribute to meeting strategic objectives it was analysed how the to determine required performance targets within teams against current performance and has been discussed the need to encourage individual commitment to team performance in achievement of organisational goals. Apart from that under that particular learning outcome it was discussed the application of delegation, mentoring and coaching to the achievement of the organisational objectives and the team performance plan to meet organisational objectives.

Under the third learning outcome it has been analysed the process for monitoring team performance and initiate changes where necessary and the team performance against agreed objectives. In the second half of the third learning outcome it has been discussed the impact of the team performance in contributing to meeting strategic objectives.

Finally in the last learning outcome it has been analysed the influencing and persuading methodologies to gain the commitment of individuals to a course of action and the impact of individual dynamics, interests and organisational politics on securing the commitment of individuals to a course of action.