The Performance Review Dilemma: Differentiating Gaps in Competence versus Execution
Dealing with clarity, excuses, and meaningfully helping your team members develop skills for success.
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During this time of the year, you either already gave/received a performance review or are about to do it. You may either use the dreaded yearly reviews or some other form of frequent check-ins, but the goal is to analyze the performance of an individual and create plans for their continued development.
With the many organizations and leaders I coach, I found a common problem: there can be a mismatch between the achievements (performance, results, etc), and the competencies of the “job description” (skills, abilities, etc).
Let me clarify with a few examples.
A senior PM is not showing any signs of having an innovative strategy for their product. When confronted with these results, they argue that for the next year, they are embarking on a tech effort to change the platform, and there is no space for strategic innovation.
A PM hasn’t shown any signs of having done problem discovery. When confronted with these results, they argue that there was no opportunity since they were constantly handed over solutions to implement, and they mostly made small usability discoveries and moved on to delivery.
We can argue that they could have done more (and these are overly simplified examples), but the critical question is: can we say they have a low skill in (1) strategy or (2) problem discovery?
Taking into consideration only these situations, the answer is no.
And to make it more explicit, think about the action plan. If you were to say they lack skills and send them to do some training, the following year you will probably get the same result!
Because there is a preceding reason for the performance gap that is preventing them from even trying and putting their skills to the test.
It gets even more complex!
The previous situation was simple: there was a gap in results but uncertainty about the reason.
Before jumping to how to deal with it, I want to highlight a final complex scenario: what if the performance was great but unrelated to the applied skills?
Let’s see another example:
A PM has delivered an important project on time and hit the expected metric results. But all decisions were made elsewhere. They simply “project-managed” the initiative successfully and didn’t even validate the external decisions.
Given the excellent results, this PM is asking for a promotion to Senior PM (and some stakeholders are really supportive).
Show you give a promotion?
Taking into consideration only this situation, the answer is no.
They “got lucky” with this project, but you can’t say if they would successfully manage more uncertain initiatives.
3 Steps to Get to the Root Cause of the Performance Gap
There are 4 reasons why people don't do what they are supposed to do:
Motivation: they don't want to do it.
Structural issue: they can't do it.
Skill: they don't know how to do it.
Goals / Expectations: they don't know what they are expected to do.
Here is the catch: for knowledge workers, particularly in the product space, responsibilities are usually complex and nuanced, and there are multiple ways to perform them.
Let’s consider only 2 examples: ask 10 PMs to
draw a Roadmap
or define an MVP
and you will probably get 10 different answers…
This already gives us a hint on how to start assessing the performance gap.
Step 1. Assess Clarity of Expectations
Let's say you ask for a Roadmap, and you receive, for example, a detailed list of implementation dates for the upcoming month (what I would typically call a Release Plan).
You first do the mea culpa and clarify what you mean by a Roadmap. You must take the time -and the good opportunity!- to discuss the nuances like the expected detail level, the time horizon, etc.
By the way, you can do this as the lead (asking and clarifying what you expected them to do), or as the individual contributor receiving feedback (asking for clarification).
Step 2. Assess Skill
Once the expectation is clear, we can understand how skillfully we can perform a task. Following our example, doing a good high-level and outcome-oriented roadmap requires different abilities, like deeply understanding the strategy, mapping the opportunity space, assessing priorities and resources to define the right sequence, etc.
By reviewing and discussing the result, you will better understand the problem and find opportunities to teach and work together on the expected level of performance.
Step 3. Assess Impediments
Finally, if the expectation is clear and people have the skills to do it, you must understand what is getting in their way.
This can take any shape or form, and your job is to act as a facilitator to remove impediments and help your team thrive. Notice that this facilitation doesn’t always mean you removing the obstacle. Sometimes is guiding your team so they find ways to overcome it.
There is a considerable “STOP” sign to be mentioned here: the impediment can actually reveal a gap in another skill.
Two examples:
A senior PM has shown good strategic thinking and formulated a powerful strategy but could not get buy-in. This can signal a lack of storytelling skills.
A new PM in your organization who has strong data analysis skills. But at his previous job, he accessed data through a dashboard, while in your company, he needs to run some prefabricated SQL (and learn how to update the parameters).
How to Evaluate Unperformed Skills?
There is one extra situation worth mentioning.
Let’s say you are (or your direct report is) performing well, and you ask for a promotion. Many times there is a skill you may need to prove to get the new position: strategy, leading people, higher-level stakeholder management, etcetera.
We may think this is unfair, but it is very reasonable. Before making someone a commercial airline pilot, they not only need to know how to pilot, they need to prove they can do it with many hours of good performance.
The problem is: unlike a pilot, you don’t get opportunities to prove this skill.
Here is where development plans are tricky but crucial. You may discuss weather training is required, but in any case you then need to find and agree with your manager some scenario to put the skill to the test.
Strategy: create it for an upcoming project. Can be a remote idea to practice, if nothing is readily available.
Leading: help onboard or lead a new intern. Can be joining a mentorship community if no internal opportunity is available.
Stakeholder management: shadow your boss and do the next presentation they are supposed to provide.
Conclusion
I believe these are all different flavors of the coaching hat that leaders must wear.
But getting to this root cause, and differentiating the type of gap, allows both you and your direct report to create better plans and improve situations and skills in a way that truly impacts the results.
I hope you enjoyed it. Now I want to know! What are your performance review challenges?