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Management Observation Program Best Practice 3 – Use of Standard Observation Forms
In order to be fully effective, a management observation program must have credibility with those being observed and provide organizational performance improvement information. Credibility is established when those observed can expect both repeatable evaluations by one manager and consistent evaluations by different managers for a given job performance relative to established standards. Organizational performance improvement information is yielded when evaluation data from across the organization is aggregated; providing insights to the common patterns of desired and undesired employee behaviors.
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Projects and the organizations supporting them share a key characteristic; they both deploy human, financial, and material resources to achieve defined goals. So like organizations, projects must have specific goals against which the project manager’s decisions and team member actions are focused. Like mission measures, results-based project goals should be defined before work begins and refined as scope and/or circumstances change. Only when this occurs can a project be effectively managed and efficiently completed.
The goal of any observation program is to promote adherence to the performance standard delineated by management in order to consistently achieve superior results. Additionally, observation program credibility exists when those being observed can expect both repeatable evaluations by one manager and consistent evaluations by different managers for a given job performance relative to established standards. Therefore, management observations must be aligned with and focus on those critical standards required to ensure outstanding performance.
Rarely does unique, creative, or exploratory work complete on-time and on-budget (accounting for personnel, material, and financial resources). Although planners make every effort to accurately predict task needs, the many variables and uncertainties associated with these types of tasks make highly accurate planning nearly impossible. Even highly repetitive tasks can suffer from unforeseeable circumstances that delay their performance or raise costs. Subsequently, buffers are often added to work plans to accommodate for the uncertainty. At times, these buffers aren’t enough. On other occasions, excess time and/or resources remain. Only through timely communication of activity status can managers proactively prioritize and adjust their operations or project plans to accommodate the unknown and recover excess time and resources.
Project complexity seems to increase exponentially with team size. Larger teams require greater division of work and additional managers and supervisors to oversee these disparate efforts. Subsequently, the number of meetings increases to coordinate and align efforts between work groups, communication with stakeholders, and gather requirements and ideas from the organization’s subject matter experts. Absent meeting coordination, team members and line organization sponsors and participants become increasingly double and triple booked; causing individual frustration and diminishing the team’s effectiveness credibility.
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