{"id":80687,"date":"2022-01-19T09:13:42","date_gmt":"2022-01-19T17:13:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.betterworks.com\/?p=80687"},"modified":"2022-11-21T23:31:05","modified_gmt":"2022-11-22T07:31:05","slug":"its-time-to-stop-trying-to-manage-employee-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.betterworks.com\/magazine\/its-time-to-stop-trying-to-manage-employee-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Time to Stop Trying to Manage Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s the dawn of a new year. And for millions of employees and managers around that world, that means it\u2019s time to face the two most dread-inducing words at work: performance appraisal.<\/em><\/strong> Or performance review or performance evaluation, pick your favorite. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every year, this long-honored corporate tradition is the pinnacle event of our performance management<\/a> process. Hours of time and immeasurable emotional energy will be poured into the preparation, delivery, and reception of this ritual.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while no one will argue against the importance of performance, you will be hard-pressed to find anyone who looks forward to it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Managers procrastinate and delay. Employees anxiously await its culmination with dread. All while HR pulls their hair out trying to facilitate a process no one seems to like. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If performance is so important, why do performance management processes feel so awful?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe performance isn\u2019t meant to be managed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of \u201cmanaging\u201d performance is a carryover from an era of work that looks nothing like today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The time is long past due for a reset in how we think about and approach employee performance<\/a>. That requires looking for answers in new places. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of those places might be Iowa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An Insight into Performance from the Farm<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As a kid growing up in the farm country of rural Iowa, I was put to work at a pretty early age. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my very first jobs before I even turned twelve years old was helping neighboring farmers to \u201cwalk beans.\u201d The job involved walking up and down the individual rows of long soybean fields to cut out weeds one by one. It was just as tedious and boring as it sounds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it was vital work for the farmer. If those weeds were left unchecked, they would overgrow the beans and ultimately do significant damage to the yield (or performance) of the crop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Battling weeds is just one of the many things farmers do to care for their crops. They battle insects, add fertilizers, bring in water when it\u2019s too dry, and drain water away when it\u2019s too wet. Farmers know when they plant a seed in the ground, if it has what it needs to grow and doesn\u2019t meet any major obstacles (like overgrown weeds), that seed will grow and flourish into the best version of itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This work is called cultivation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farmers don\u2019t waste time trying to manage the things they can\u2019t control, like the weather. They simply focus on creating an environment, to the greatest extent they are able to, where each plant can do what it is naturally programmed to do\u2013grow into the best version of itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farming is a performance optimization business, and it provides a powerful model for how we should approach performance at work. It\u2019s time for a shift from performance management to cultivation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Management to Cultivation<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

To shift our approach to management and control to cultivation requires a shift in how we think about performance. We have to think about human performance in the same way a farmer thinks about the growth of their crops.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Cultivation Mindset includes embracing some core beliefs about human performance at work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n