This is going to be a short and hopefully sweet post.
First, I need to acknowledge Sandy Mamoli. My goodness, I love her perspective. I think she’s smart, relevant, wise, experienced, pointed, and courageous. She’s one of those honest folks we need around us to tell us when we’re off-track. When we’ve made a huge mistake…that we continue to make. That is…when we have no clothes.
Sandy recently published a blog post entitled—Individual performance is not relevant.
In it, she makes a really compelling case that we should stop worrying about, considering, measuring, and rewarding individual performance. Instead, we should be solely focused on teams and teaming and team results.
I’ve always felt this way. Always.
But I’ve been encouraged (forced) to measure individuals for years. Sure, I can say…
My boss made me do it
HR made me do it
The company culture made me do it
My peers made me do it
Etc….
I wasn’t a victim either. I opted into assessing individuals. But years ago, I decided to opt-out of that…forever!
To entice you to read the entire article, here’s a snippet—
Stop “managing” individual performance. I recently spoke in Hamburg at an Agile People HR meetup and someone asked “How do you manage performance?” To that person I want to say, it’s a moot point, really. Individual performance is irrelevant. You can’t win (or lose) as an individual. So, let’s please stop wasting everyone’s time trying to measure and manage individual performance.
Wrapping Up
So…
What are you going to do with this new information? Are you going to pivot from individual to team considerations as a leader? In the end, you know in your heart what Sandy is saying is true. It just is.
So, the real question is—Leaders, are you going to change?
Thank you, Sandy!
Stay agile my friends,
Bob.