How to Turn Performance Issues into Goal-Targeting Objectives

It’s not uncommon for organizations to experience performance issues in various ways with their staff. It can be easy to identify the performance issues occurring in the workplace, but why not use those issues as leverage to target goals? In other words, let’s use performance lemons to create goal-targeting lemonade!

The following 4 steps will help you create a Q&A blueprint to addressing performance issues in a more strategic manner:

1.       Define and Review Organizational Goals.  Are goals established and communicated in your organization or department? Be explicit, be specific and be clear about the targets you want your staff to reach.

2.       Identify the Performance Issues.  What’s happening among your staff and with their performance? Are the current performance results negatively impacting the organization in any way? List these issues and describe why they’re considered negative issues. Determining the “why” will help bring clarity to what you want the desired outcome to be.

Use performance lemons to create goal-targeting lemonade!

3.       Cross Examine the Issues in Comparison to the Desired Results.  Will the correcting these issues move you closer to the desired results? Be specific with this comparison. Will changing or correcting the identified issues be conducive to the outcome needed? Will it get you closer to the goals defined in step 1? This will act as a filter to ensure that you’re only correcting issues that have the most impact on the organization.

4.       Objectify the Desired Results.  Once you’ve defined the goals and the desired performance outcomes, convert them into measurable objectives that will target those goals. Ensure that each object is measurable (able to measure progress) and realistic (the staff is capable of reaching them).

While performance issues usually have a negative impact, they can actually become objectives in your game plan to reaching organizational goals.