Staying On Top of Your Numbers in a Push World - Goal Management

Ironically many managers continue to rely on an outdated cumbersome time wasting push model for staying abreast of their team member's updates. "Send me your latest sales figures for the month and the status of your top ten accounts" or "Set aside every Monday morning for our weekly team's status update meeting".
Push is Passé
Are you and other managers in your organization placing your trust in a static push process to stay abreast of mission critical dynamic activities related to sales, production, billing and other metric driven scorecard objectives?
"If all you have is a hammer then the whole world begins to look like a nail." So if your team's communication tools are limited to face to face meetings, phone conversations, email and attachments and hard copies then you and your people are spending more time on your communication process than you need to and less time on making the numbers happen.
The overhead spent by employees and managers emailing, copying, and printing performance updates back and forth is both staggering and unnecessary. A dynamic web based goal management approach relieves employees and managers from the tedious and ever present need to push mission critical information back and forth to each other.
Push is Passé
Are you and other managers in your organization placing your trust in a static push process to stay abreast of mission critical dynamic activities related to sales, production, billing and other metric driven scorecard objectives?
"If all you have is a hammer then the whole world begins to look like a nail." So if your team's communication tools are limited to face to face meetings, phone conversations, email and attachments and hard copies then you and your people are spending more time on your communication process than you need to and less time on making the numbers happen.
The overhead spent by employees and managers emailing, copying, and printing performance updates back and forth is both staggering and unnecessary. A dynamic web based goal management approach relieves employees and managers from the tedious and ever present need to push mission critical information back and forth to each other.
A Perfect Storm
A manager's challenge to stay current with their employee's performance is exacerbated by a lethal perfect storm: Today's workforce is increasingly mobile and time constrained, competitive and economic forces are fueling the need for just in time operational data, and organizations are desperate for a better bottom up flow of mission critical information. "What are our competitors doing?"
Pull is the New Normal
Empowered employees using an intuitive goal management solution can post their achievements and updates to their assigned tasks, create new goals for themselves, and offer fresh ideas for improving performance.
Managers track their team-members progress in real time, generate summary scorecard reports, receive bottom up suggestions with next steps and updates; all of this without ever having to print, copy, or email attachments or attend status meetings.
Manager and employee are free from shuffling paper, version management, exchanging and tracking emails, and are less reliant on time consuming status meetings. Higher level managers have line of site of the numbers of their direct and indirect reports and the underlying activities and the forward thinking next steps.
Managers and employees can share strategies and next steps and create micro goals to help ensure major targets are met.
Summary
Goals are meant to be achieved. Goal management software will operationalize your cascaded corporate goals. It is the gift an organization gives itself to streamline the data gathering and tactical management process so less time is spent identifying performance gaps and more time focused on bridging them.
Related published article in Ezines "The 80/20 Principle of Meetings"

IFP's Summit Goal Management system's annual subscription is scalable starting at just 25 employees, and can be configured as a stand alone system or integrated with IFP's TalentPeak™ performance and learning management system.
IFP has been meeting the HR needs of organizations large and small since 2003. Our flagship TalentPeak™ performance management is scalable, robust, competitively priced and provides free benchmark customer support.
The core performance management system includes the Multi-Rater and Job Description Builder modules and can be further accessorized with Learning Management, Goal Management and our unique Context Targeted Compass 360.
Clients in need of performance management, applicant tracking, surveys, assessments skills testing and leadership development solutions can look to IFP for any of these offerings and benefit from using a single source vendor while participating in our multi-solution discount program. There are further discounts for Government, Education, and Non-Profits.
For more information email rhiller@insightsforperformance.com

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Where To Focus

We need to have focus in our lives to help us move from where we are to where we should be. Without focus, we tend to do nothing. But there are counterfeits to what we should focus on.
Some focus on winning. That's counterfeit. If we're not winning, it can discourage us and make us feel like failures. It can put negative pressure on us that will virtually assure that we don't win. Instead, we need to figure out where we are and where we should be as winners, and then do what we're supposed to do in the best way we can do it. That is how to win. That's the only way to win. A sports team can focus on winning. When they think they've got the game in the bag, they might slow down and get lax. There are true stories of the losing team coming from far behind to win the game. If a team-and I'm not talking just about sports anymore-thinks they're losing, they get that sinking feeling that is antithetical to what they have to feel to win. They do desperate things that almost assure a loss. If every member of the team will just do what they are supposed to do, the best they can do it, they stand the best chance of winning.
A company can focus on money. Again, there is probably no better way to make sure it runs out of the stuff than to focus on it above all else. Focus on giving the customer what she wants with excellence. The money will follow. Of course. Focusing on money can make a company do dishonest and unethical things. Focusing on money usually makes a company do minimal things. Money is absolutely necessary for a company to stay in business and to offer products or services. But it is just a tool. It is not the essence of the business.
Many focus on happiness. If we focus on being happy, we will not be. I wasn't part of setting things up and I'm not sure why this is true, but I know it is. I'm sure it has something to do with selfishness, which never leads to happiness or anything worthwhile. Happiness comes only from forgetting ourselves, and being with and helping others.
Some focus on love. We should never focus on being loved. We have no control over others and how they feel, and there is no way to make others love us. We should focus on loving others.
We should not focus on being intelligent. We should focus on learning valuable and useful things. People who are trying to be intelligent or who try to impress everyone with their intelligence and wisdom are very obnoxious.
Spirituality: We should not focus on being pious and on trying to show everyone how humble we are. Talk about unrighteous pride! We should focus on being obedient to God, and on loving our fellow beings. We should focus on loving Earth, our families, ourselves, our neighbors, and complete strangers. We should focus on being honest. We should focus on giving what we can to help others, even if it's only our time or our attention.
Most focus on and think endlessly about success, as in wealth, possessions, fashion, fame, power, etc. People who focus their lives on this kind of "success" are not successful. People who try to be better and to bring others along with them are successful. People who wear certain clothes, drive certain cars, and live in certain neighborhoods to show off to others, and especially people who judge others for what they wear, what they drive, and where they live are in no way successful. People who go into frivolous debt to put on a show for others are not successful. Success really isn't an outward thing. You can't tell who is successful by their appearance and their environments. Success is inside us.
By default, we focus on ourselves. Over-preoccupation with ourselves leads to misery. Only by focusing on others at least as much as we focus on ourselves can we experience joy.
This is frustrating when we first come to understand it. We don't want life to be so hard. There are many things in life that will completely allude us if we focus on them. But then we come to understand that this is perfect, and we value it. If we could just reach out and take the most valuable things in life, we would be shallow and hollow for our whole lives. Because we have to work hard, all our lives, to have and share the most valuable things, we become valuable. We do, share, and give in ways that make all of humankind better.
Let's notice what we tend to focus on in life, and make changes where necessary. Let's remind ourselves that there are no shortcuts to anything worthwhile. Let's focus on what will get us and others to where we want to be and where we should be, and get to work.

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