Performance Journey Outcomes

A change initiative fable ...

Does this sound familiar? Things aren’t going well at work. People claim that “morale is down.” Employee turnover has increased. And everyone seems to complain that “everyone else” is doing their job poorly.

So, someone starts an initiative to improve workplace culture. The initiative brings posters, rallies, training, branded swag, and culture-ambassador awards.

There’s a lot of buzz, and the catchy culture slogans from marketing have caught on. 

Then, after a month or two, the activity peters out. At the end of the year, turnover is about the same and, according to the latest company survey, employee engagement is worse than before.

The initiative quietly dies and is forgotten. A couple of years later, someone says, “We really need to do something about morale..."

Breaking the cycle

I bet something about that little story resonates with you because, by some measures, something like 70% of all change efforts fail.

After more than 20 years of working on performance improvement efforts—failures, successes, and everything in between—I built the performance journey methodology to overcome the most common reasons change efforts fail: inconsistent sponsorship, incomplete solutions, and inadequate implementation.

The performance-journey approach is built on a foundation of best practices in process improvement, change management, and human-centered design—all filtered through the lens of behavioral science.

At the core is this principle: People change their behavior when we help them understand why they should change, what they have to do differently, how to do it, and when they've sampled the wow of successfully changing their behavior.

To meet these behavior-change needs, successful performance journeys—those that create meaningful, sustained change—need to produce three essential work products:

• Compass to align performance with meaningful organizational results and help performers see where they’re going
• Gear to fully equip performers with everything they need (i.e., expectations, tools, training, incentives, feedback, etc.) to work successfully in new ways
• Map to guide performers to their performance destination as they realize the why, what, how, and wow of changing their behavior

Here are just a few examples.

Wellness Plan Adoption

A Fortune 500 bank was overhauling its benefits program to save money and promote better physical and financial health among employees. 

Our compass defined specific goals (i.e., wellness program enrollment) and target performance (i.e., completed health assessments). 

Though the target behaviors were not difficult to perform, employees tend to be very sensitive about changes to their benefits. In this case, gear included frequent communication across several channels about how the new programs would work, and how they would benefit employees. We simplified the enrollment process, provided tools to help employees select plan options, and held virtual and in-person benefits fairs to answer questions.

Our delivery map included three months of communication leading up to the launch, field champions in every location to promote wellness programs, and team-based wellness competitions for several months following the launch.

As a result, we exceeded our goal of 90% enrollment in the new wellness program during its first three months.

Making Meetings Matter

A managed services division of a multinational imaging corporation wanted to create a high-performance culture. 

To define the compass, the project team interviewed senior leaders about the drivers of productivity and settled on more effective meetings as an opportunity to explore. We then surveyed team members about their baseline experiences with effective and ineffective meetings. We ultimately chose ideal  meeting agendas as the work product with the most significant impact on improving productivity through more effective meetings.

Gear included worksheets and templates to guide meeting planning, plus training on how to use the tools. We also selected, equipped, and trained coaches to provide one-on-one feedback to the highest-priority meeting facilitators.

Our delivery map included an official “launch” by the division president, with messaging cascaded to teams through vice presidents. For several months, coaches reviewed meeting facilitators’ agendas and provided feedback. Meeting participants used brief surveys to provide feedback about whether and how agendas were used in meetings they attended.

We saw a significant increase in ideal meeting agendas included in calendar invitations. The project sponsor declared the effort a success and approved subsequent project phases to focus on meeting facilitation and follow-up.

Timekeeping Compliance

Employees in a Fortune 500 enterprise- learning department had to begin using the company’s time‑tracking and project-management platform. This would require all employees to log all work time in the not-so-user-friendly system. In addition, project managers had to move all project plans from Excel into the system.

Our sponsor—the chief learning officer (CLO)—defined the project’s compass as correctly submitted timecards, with a goal of 100% compliance.

To design gear, we recruited representatives from every team in the department and asked them to collect input from their teammates about how to best support their behavior changes. Based on those ideas, we created “in-your-face” job aids as reminders, hands-on training where project managers completed real work on their project plans, and a practice period when employees tracked their time on paper before it was officially required to get used to tracking and to calibrate on categories.

Our delivery map included frequent communication and reminders throughout the week when time tracking began. On the first timecard Friday, project team members prompted employees and answered questions. Around 4 p.m., leaders walked the floor and gave stickers to everyone who had submitted their timecards. 

For six weeks after time tracking began, the CLO shared submission data and drew raffle winners from the people who had submitted their timecards on time. With sufficient momentum and 100% compliance in the first six weeks, the project team transitioned full responsibility for timecard management to each manager.

The Methodology

Those examples include different projects, tackled in various ways, but each produced a clearly defined compass, gear, and map.

With the most recent evolution of the performance-journey approach, we’ve synthesized a range of wisdom, best practices, tools, and techniques into a training program. 

This methodology can help almost anyone do the work, tell the stories, and draft the plans required to produce a compass, gear, and map to guide employees to their performance destination.

Contact us today to implement the performance journey methodology into your clinical practice!