Mark Flaherty (MF): Performance management will become more pervasive within organizations. If you’re old enough, like me, think back to the days when computers were first being introduced into people’s offices, when personal computers first came out. The senior managers at that time were not computer savvy, to put it kindly. Yet, they understood there were computers, and that they were these big refrigerator-sized boxes found in the back office and operations departments. But these managers didn’t have a personal relationship with their computers.
But nevertheless, executives would get their PCAT, and they would put it in the corner, and it would have the green c prompt burned into the screen. They typically wouldn’t fire up any applications unless someone was coming to the office to visit them, so they could show them they were computer savvy.
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Eventually that changed. Why did that change? Because the next generation of managers came along, and they had been exposed to computers, they were comfortable with computers. They were actively using computers.
That is what is inevitably happening, what will continue to happen in this marketplace. Many of the senior executives who are getting ready to retire, with all due respect to them, don’t always have a full appreciation for the value of performance management. They understand the value of computers, and they use computers, personal computers.
And they may even have their own dashboards, monitoring dashboards or sales dashboards, what have you. They certainly use email, word-processing, applications like that. But they don’t have the understanding of the strategic value of higher performance management. They weren’t indoctrinated with the science of measurement and improvement.
Some of them do get it already, clearly. But in general, what we are going to see is that the influence of generational change will cause a blossoming of performance management within the enterprise. You’ll begin to see performance management become the mainstay of the enterprise with all functions working off the same playbook and common language, with all types of employees comfortable using it.