Performance Decides Promotions - James Bryant

James Bryant - "Business Excellence"

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Introduction
People are one of the biggest assets that you can invest in for your company.  You can have the best business plan and the best strategy, but the execution of those plans relies on the people in your organization.  The ability to attract and retain top talent is critical to your growth plan.  One of the best things that you can do for top talent is to surround them with other top talent and to promote top talent through the company’s career path.   Last week we talked about the importance of having a career path within your organization.  The path has been laid out and the requirements for promotional opportunities has been set.  Promotions that are not based on performance can lead to decreased productivity, decreased moral, and lower employee satisfaction rates. 

Growing Leaders Grow People 
Growing People Grow Businesses
Growing Business Grow Profits!

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Show Objectives
This week’s show focuses on Promotions based on performance.  In preparing for this episode I talked to several current and former small business owners and managers within larger established organizations to get their perspective on the promotions process.  We will talk about the concept of top grading within a formal talent management framework. There will also be some time set aside to talk about how these concepts function if you have a flat organizational structure. 

What You Need to Know
 No Career Path No Growth

Top Grading
When you top grade your promotions, you intentionally select the top 10% of your employees and groom them for the next level or promote now, then build a profile of them as a basis of your talent management system.

Key Issues:
Owner/Manager Perspective

1. How do you transition your company to a performance based promotions system?
2. Many companies set up promotions based on time. When this is the case, there is not much motivation to perform to high standards. 
3. How do you segment your employees in order to identify and determine who is your top 10%?
4. Look at a career from 2 viewpoints - technical and organizational.
5. Develop people technically first - job of management is developing skill mastery,
6. Continue to develop their business skills to make competence complete,
7. Promotion is based ability to demonstrate new skills​

Key Issues - Employee Perspective:

1. Take ownership of your career
2. Become competent for your position
3. Find opportunities to gain exposure for knowledge and skills beyond your position 

What You Need to Do

1. Have a great understanding of your growth needs
   1. Positions
   2. Types of leaders
   3. Company culture

 

1. Review your performance management system and ensure that promotions are based on performance and the details of the required performance are clear.  
   1. The performance management system must align with the previously developed career path.
   2. Performance must be defined and measured

 

1. Grow Your Leaders
   1. The performance and preparation to lead is essential
   2. Equip managers and leaders with the tools needed for growing their team members
   3. Provide coaching if needed.

 

1. Grow Your People
   1. Identify areas of development needed by your employees to accelerate business and personal growth.
   2. Develop training programs (internal and/or external) to fill the technical gaps first.
   3. Augment the technical training with training for other skills (Human, innovation, effective communication, etc.)
   4. Work with employees to explore and achieve areas of personal development  

 

1. Grow Your Profits
   1. The use of top grading will show your employees that performance is rewarded.   
   2. Provide Promotions and greater development opportunities to those employees that exhibit the needed skill mastery.
   3. The continued growth of the people within your organization will translate into higher productivity and higher profits!

Next Show: Formal Training Programs to Accelerate Growth

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Written by James Bryant
Let’s connect.  Use this link to schedule a complimentary session to assess your current leadership training or peak performance coaching needs.
https://calendly.com/james-betteryou4u/ibgr

We can also connect on Linkedin
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbryant2/

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