Introduction
As a manager of people, you play a vital role In 1954, Peter Drucker wrote the first book about management as a profession. The Practice of Management is still considered a must-read book for students, aspiring managers, new managers, and experienced executives. Drucker posited that the primary role of a manager is to “make people productive” and to accomplish this, managers should perform five functions:

(1) Set objectives and establish the goals that employees need to reach.
(2) Determine the right roles for the right people and organize the tasks they need to
complete.
(3) Effectively motivate and communicate in a way that molds their direct reports into
cooperative teams while conveying information up, down, and around the organization.
(4) Establish the methods that will measure results to keep the organization moving in
the right direction.
(5) Develop direct reports who are the organization’s primary resource.

Since Drucker’s book, libraries full of management books have been written on these themes, but the majority fail to explain exactly how to accomplish these goals. This failure leaves you, whether a new or experienced manager, without a clear understanding of your role and essential functions. This book isn’t about theory—it’s about doing! And exactly how to do it. In fact, I’m going to teach you how to create a high-performance work environment.

How do I define a “high performance work environment”? I believe it’s an environment that maximizes the performance of individuals, where the goals of the organization are met by thoroughly engaged employees.

Why should you care whether your employees are engaged. Because employee engagement equates to profitability and productivity. Engaged teams show dramatically less employee turnover and absenteeism, 17% higher productivity, and 21%
greater profitability. Unfortunately, according to Gallup’s 2016 State of the American Workplace Report, only 33% of the workforce is engaged. And too often "employee engagement" has meant employees who get to work early, stay late, and remain connected at night and on weekends. That’s a recipe for burnout, not long-term high performance.

What Gallup concluded is critical for you as a manager to understand: managers—and by that, I mean “managers of people,” a term that I will use throughout the rest of this book—are the key to employee engagement. And the sad fact is, managers of people aren’t creating environments that engage their employees. As a manager of people, you need to understand what you and your fellow managers may be doing in the workplace to create or destroy engagement. I’ll not only help you understand this better in the chapters ahead, I’ll walk you through exactly what you need to do.

Lack of engagement is an expensive problem for every employer. But conversely, before engagement can happen, in fact before better management can happen, organizations must stop viewing their employees as a cost item! Businesses tend to look at their employees as a cost item in their budgets. They see their products and customers as the source of profit and value. Sadly, when an organization puts its workforce on the “cost” side of the financial equation, it misses a vital piece of the puzzle. Not only are employees more than a “cost item,” they’re your organization’s most valuable asset.

Your employees sell your products! They contribute value by identifying or implementing cost savings in production, purchasing, or distribution. There are also several attributes brought to the table by employees who generate intangible value such as communication skills, teamwork, and leadership. Your employees generate goodwill through interpersonal relationships, both inside and outside of the organization. I concede that these benefits are difficult to measure, but they’re real and often unrecognized by management until it’s too late, such as when you lose an exceptional employee to a competitor due to ineffective management.

Most strategies, such as mergers, acquisitions, entering new markets, and product launches, fail because of poor execution. Let’s face it, poor execution is most often directly attributable to poor performance management. While striving to excel, you can add important value to your organization if you deliver programs, plans, and innovation that spark employee engagement.

Competitive advantage comes not only from an organization’s products and customers—it comes from the energy, passion, talent, and creativity of its employees.

According to a 2012 Dale Carnegie white paper, an organization’s workforce is the single thing that creates “sustainable competitive advantage, and therefore ROI, organizational value and long-term strength.” The whitepaper concluded that “when it comes to people, research has shown time and again that employees who are engaged significantly outperform workgroups that aren’t. In the fight for competitive advantage where employees are the differentiator, highly engaged employees are the ultimate goal.”

Many managers “manage” their employees—they discuss work tasks and goals. But engagement is derived via authentic connection and individual attention. According to Gallup’s 2015 Re-Engineering Performance Management Report, a strengths-based and engagement- focused approach to management fosters true employee development. 

These are the three critical components:

1. Establish expectations.
2. Continually manage performance via effective feedback and coaching.
3. Create accountability.

When the focus is placed on these three critical areas, employees become better at what they do and more fulfilled, and performance, productivity, and engagement all naturally rise. My P+sitively Managing MethodSM was built around these three key components. Note the phrase “continually manage performance” here. Continuous performance management is the key to everything.

What is Continuous Performance Management?

Continuous performance management is defined as performance management processes that take place throughout the year on an ongoing basis, as opposed to those based on traditional annual appraisals. A 2016 global survey by the management thought leader CEB found that 95% of managers are not satisfied with their organization’s annual performance process and 75% of employees see it as unfair. Another study found that only 8% of organizations believe their traditional performance management process drives business value.

In contrast to this, research has found that over 50% of organizations where goals are reviewed each month are in the top quartile in terms of financial performance, whereas only 24% of organizations where goals are reviewed once a year made it into the same bracket. Similarly, frequent feedback has been shown to boost performance by up to 39%. Gallup’s 2016 study also found that employees whose managers hold regular one-on-ones with them are almost three times as likely to be engaged.

Who has adopted Continuous Performance Management?

Adobe was the first well-known organization to adopt continuous performance management when they ditched their annual appraisal process in 2012 in favor of ‘check-ins‘ and frequent feedback. Adobe worked hard to embed this new approach into their culture and that work has paid off, with voluntary turnover decreasing by 30% since they introduced check-ins.

U.S. food producer and distributor Cargill also transformed their outdated performance management process in 2012. They got rid of their annual review forms and performance ratings and instead encouraged managers to have regular, on-the-job conversations and give frequent, constructive feedback. They too have seen remarkable results, with 70% of their employees now indicating they feel valued due to their ongoing performance discussions with their manager—a massive improvement.

More recently, a number of leading, global organizations have implemented continuous performance management, including Deloitte, Microsoft, IBM, Accenture, and most famously— General Electric, who had previously pioneered annual appraisals and rankings.

Even if your organization hasn’t discovered and implemented a continuous performance management system yet, don’t let that stop you. The P+sitively Managing MethodSM can be seamlessly integrated into any annual review process you are required to use. In fact, by using my processes, tools, and templates, you will never dread the annual review process again!

What you’ll learn in this book – The P+sitively Managing MethodSM

✓ How to recognize managerial behavior that destroys your employees’ passion, kills
innovation, and results in costly turnover, especially of high-performing employees.
✓ How you can incorporate a few processes and tools into your existing performance
review process to make it more positive and productive.
✓ Simple steps to establish the clearly defined – and measurable - performance
expectations that your employees crave!
✓ Something I’d bet you’ve never thought about—why you should expect your employees
to problem-solve.

✓ Easy to follow tips that will let you get the most out of your regularly scheduled one-on-
ones.

✓ The difference between providing “feedback” and “coaching” and why each is important
in engaging your employees.
✓ Exactly how to respond to a variety of emotional reactions that employees may have
when receiving feedback.
✓ What the Manager Multiplier EffectSM is and why you must learn to use it.

I realize that, in this book, I may not be telling you anything you haven’t heard before or didn’t already know. My intent is to remind you of what needs to be done, show you a clear path to travel along, and give you the tools you need to traverse it. The processes in this book are simple, but don’t confuse “simple” with “easy.” Nothing about dealing with interpersonal communication is easy. And managing employees is a lot of work. But I know that if you follow the path I’m going to lay out for you and use the tools I provide, you will become a better manager, and your employees will be more engaged.

So how do you change the behavior of your employees to move your workforce from “average” or even “above average” to “highly engaged”? By the end of this book, not only will you have the answer to that question, you’ll have all the tools you need as a manager of people to accomplish this within your team or department. If you’re an organizational leader, you’ll have all the tools you need to provide your managers of people.

But before we look to change your employees we need to take a closer look at you—their manager. Turn the page to begin your journey!

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