Performance echelons assign tasks to each other.

Assigning tasks | What can be done to make leaders at all levels of the enterprise perform their duties?

Abstract of core books

"Performance Echelon" points out the mistakes that most leaders make: they don't understand their responsibilities, exceed their authority, and do many things by themselves, which leads to the lack of room for subordinates to give full play to their talents and affects team effectiveness. The author of this book summarizes the methods to solve these problems: establishing a performance echelon within the enterprise, clarifying the responsibilities of leaders at all levels, cooperating with each other, forming a hierarchical relationship of cooperation and mutual understanding, and improving team efficiency.

Who are suitable for reading?

entrepreneur

minister

First-line manager

About the author

Stephen? Derot, CEO of Derot Human Resources Company, was an early designer of succession planning system of General Electric Company, and worked in human resources management in INA Company (now CIGNA Insurance Company) and Chase Manhattan Company. Derot received a degree in economics from Amherst College and co-authored two best-selling books, Leadership Echelon and Executive Successor Planning Manual.

Learn what? How to improve team effectiveness

Leaders of any organization or enterprise are prone to make the same mistake, that is, improper use of power. Leaders often spend a lot of time dealing with the problems they face now, but they are unwilling to spend enough time predicting and planning the future development of enterprises, and they are unwilling to spend time on the development and training of employees.

In order to solve this problem, the performance echelon solves this deep-rooted and long-standing problem by clarifying the purpose of each leadership level within the organization and the specific performance that should be achieved, and ensures the success of the short-term and long-term operation of the enterprise. Facing the enterprise, this book reveals how the work is transferred from the highest level to the lowest level, defines the achievements that should be made at different levels, and discusses what leaders at each level must pass on to their subordinates if they want to succeed. Learning the contents of the book can make every employee in the organization have a clear division of labor and cooperate with each other, thus improving team efficiency.

You will also find that

What is the performance echelon;

What are the levels of performance echelon?

What is the expected performance of leaders at all levels?

1. What is a performance echelon?

First of all, let's listen to a short story in The Warring States Policy: Wei Wenhou, the founding monarch of Wei during the Warring States Period, once had a drink with Tian Zifang, a minister.

As we all know, when ancient nobles entertained guests, they were very particular about ostentation and extravagance, so there was a music official playing beside them. Just as they were "eating hot pot and listening to songs", Wei Wenhou suddenly said, "Oh, no, the sound of the chime is not harmonious enough, and the tone on the left is high."

If ordinary courtiers heard these words, they would not please their master and shouted "Your Majesty's sage", but Tian Zifang didn't say anything after hearing Wei Wenhou's words, but just smiled. This made Wei Wenhou feel a little strange and asked him, "Sir, what are you laughing at?"

Tian Zifang replied: "I have heard that you know music, but you don't know music." Now that you're listening, I'm afraid the authorities will turn a deaf ear. "How to explain this sentence? Tian Zifang means that as a monarch, the most important thing is to be good at appointing officials, not personally handling specific affairs. When it comes to music, the king should know whether the music officer is competent or not, instead of using his own ears to distinguish melody and intonation every time.

After hearing this, Wei Wenhou felt that Tian Zifang made a lot of sense and praised him for his "very reasonable".

This short story tells that Tian Zifang revealed to Wei Wenhou how the monarch should perform his duties through music officials and music.

In fact, both ancient monarchs and managers at all levels in modern enterprises have their own responsibilities. Managers at different levels also have their own professional fields. The combination of different levels, complementarity of specialties and coordination of responsibilities constitute an organic whole of the enterprise, which not only performs its own duties, but also supports each other. This is a healthy organizational form. The author of this book believes that an important symbol of a healthy organization is to establish a perfect performance echelon.

So, what is a performance echelon?

Performance echelon is a phrase composed of "performance" and "echelon". Taken apart, "performance" is the sum of the quantity, quality and efficiency of tasks completed by all levels of organizations. "echelon", originally a military term, refers to the formation of troops in combat or March according to different tasks and action sequences. In an enterprise, echelon refers to the task allocation system established between different management levels within the organization.

Therefore, the performance echelon can be simply defined as a management team with performance as the core and clear hierarchy.

The author believes that every enterprise should set specific existence goals and measurable results for each management level. Each management level needs to make efforts and contributions to the success of the next management level on the premise of achieving its own goals. At the same time, the levels should not only be closely related, but also should not overlap each other.

In the book, the performance echelon is divided into seven levels, namely CEO, group executives, general manager, deputy general manager, department director, front-line manager and individual contributor.

The tasks and objectives of these seven management levels are distributed from top to bottom, just like a pyramid. The higher the manager is, the more realistic his performance goals will be and the longer the planning time will be. The lower the performance target of managers, the shorter the time span of work plan.

Let's talk about these management levels and see where you are and what business contributions you need to make.

The first is the CEO of the pyramid spire. The CEO's performance contribution is to formulate a strategic framework. If the enterprise is compared to a ship, the CEO is the captain at the helm, and what needs to be done is to be responsible for the company's long-term vision planning. He needs to obtain information from various channels, and make a decision on the future enterprise strategy based on the prediction of the general trend and the judgment of the market situation. Because this decision is qualitative, it is a retreat, and the completion period is generally longer.

After the CEO formulates the strategic framework of the enterprise, the next-level managers are the group executives, who are responsible for evaluating the current business and expanding possible new business based on this strategic framework. What group executives need to solve is whether the current business projects of the enterprise are reasonable, which businesses need to be closed and which new businesses need to be added. Moreover, consider whether the company's talent training plan can meet the future development needs of enterprises.

The third floor of the pyramid is the general manager of the business department. The management goal of this level is to consider the strategic balance between short-term and long-term profits of enterprises. What the general manager of the division needs to solve is whether the company's products or services can bring value to customers, shareholders and employees, and whether it is necessary to adjust the business strategies such as products and markets in order to add more value to the enterprise.

As a fourth-level manager, the deputy general manager of the business department needs to decide how to create a unique competitive advantage through the efforts of functional departments under the guidance of the general manager's business strategy.

The fifth floor of the pyramid is the department head. What department directors need to do is to build the business ability of functional departments, improve the production efficiency of enterprises, and cultivate and retain outstanding talents. At the same time, it is necessary to make an enterprise's operation plan and communicate enterprise information in time so that every employee's work performance can be realized.

The sixth layer of the pyramid is the front-line managers, who need to clarify the roles and responsibilities of employees in each position under the guidance of business plans, and provide training and counseling for employees to ensure the realization of business objectives.

The basic part of the pyramid is the individual contributor level with the largest base. Their task is to be responsible for the product design, production and sales of the enterprise according to the specific timetable and performance indicators formulated by the front-line manager, and to ensure that the production results are delivered to customers.

At the two levels of front-line managers and individual contributors, their performance goals must be quantifiable, executable and verifiable, and the time nodes of work plans must be clear and accurate.

The above is the responsibility design of seven levels of performance echelon in this book. In this combination of reality and complementarity, the responsibilities of managers at all levels are clearly divided, from virtual to real, and gradually reach the front-line employees, realizing the information transmission and task achievement within the enterprise.

Next, let's talk about the expected performance of leaders at different levels. Because of the reasons of time and space, let's talk about it from three aspects: the top, the middle and the grassroots.

Second, what are the expected achievements of leaders at all levels?

1, the expected performance of senior management

Top managers, we are mainly talking about the CEO of a company.

The author believes that the most important expected performance of corporate CEO is to seek a lasting foundation. In other words, the ultimate goal of CEO is to seek long-term development for the enterprise, which is the strategic direction of the enterprise.

CEO should not pay attention to the details of enterprise development, but should root the factors that are conducive to the successful operation and long-term development of enterprises into enterprises. In more detail, the CEO must be able to formulate strategies, operating plans and budgets to make the enterprise profitable and sustainable.

Figuratively speaking, we can use a country as an analogy. If a dynasty is compared to an enterprise, the emperor is the chairman of the enterprise and the prime minister is the CEO.

There is a story in Chen Shijia, the Prime Minister of Historical Records, that he was appointed as the right prime minister and the left prime minister because he and Lu, who took over the autocratic mistake, established the Chinese Emperor.

One day, Emperor Wendi came to North Korea and asked Zhou Bo, the right prime minister, "How many prison cases do we have this year?" Frequency prevaricated, unable to answer. Emperor Wendi then asked, "Dude, what's the difference between this year's money valley and that year's money valley?" Zhou Bo has been sweating for a long time, but he can't speak.

Seeing the frequency like this, the head of Emperor Wen of Han was unhappy. He said, how did you become prime minister when you asked about the politics of the country? So Wendi turned to Chen Ping, the left prime minister, and Chen Ping replied very calmly: "Your Majesty, these things are naturally known to competent officials. Prison geometry? You can ask the court prison; How much money is there, you can ask the history of money and grain. "

Emperor Wen of Han was very angry at Teng's words and asked, "According to you, if all departments are in charge of officials, what does the state want you two to do?"

Chen Ping said unhurriedly: "The prime minister's duty is to assist the son of heaven, comfort the people, and always lead the ministries to do their jobs." Hearing this, Emperor Wendi turned anger into joy and praised Chen Ping for his correct answer.

Therefore, the CEO of an enterprise should formulate a grand strategy and lead all departments of the enterprise to cooperate with each other, as Chen Ping said. Leading everyone in the right direction, acting separately and performing their duties, this is what a qualified CEO should do.

2, the expected performance of middle managers

Speaking of middle managers in enterprises, it is more vivid to say that middle managers are the "backbone" connecting the "brain" and "limbs" in enterprises, and can be said to be the hub of enterprises.

Regarding the expected performance of middle managers, let's pay attention to the department heads. Because in all leadership levels, department heads and lower-level first-line managers are often confused, and their responsibilities are difficult to distinguish clearly, so department heads are the most easily misunderstood and need to be clarified.

In my opinion, the expected performance of department heads should be to formulate a two-year operation plan. Why a two-year business plan? Under normal circumstances, many department heads will set the business plan as one year. However, this makes the director of operations a front-line manager, which will also have a certain impact on the production of enterprises.

If enterprises want their department heads to make a major breakthrough in improving productivity, they should make a longer operating plan.

In the book, the author gives an example. There is an operation director of a large power company with a business background. The way for directors to achieve expected performance is not by engineering technology, but by management ability to achieve expected goals.

Generally speaking, in power companies, performance is measured by productivity, that is to say, the evaluation of the director of this department depends on how many kWh of electricity the power station he manages can produce every day. However, in the process of power plant operation, productivity will always be reduced for one reason or another.

For example, in order to prevent the failure of power generation equipment, it is necessary to shut down the generator regularly for maintenance. Overhauls like this should be carried out at least four times a year for one week at a time. Then if we start from the expected performance of department heads, we should think about the possible impact of regular downtime maintenance on productivity. Therefore, the head of this department can not only pay attention to short-term business performance like the front-line manager, but also use his own professional knowledge background to extend the operation planning time to two years.

In the normal production process of the company, it is necessary to strengthen the operation supervision of production equipment and extend the interval of the original planned shutdown and maintenance cycle. The number of shutdown and maintenance in the first year was reduced from 4 to 3, but it remained at 4 in the second year. Under the guidance of this two-year operation plan, the productivity loss caused by preventive maintenance can be minimized.

3, the expected performance of grass-roots managers

Grass-roots managers are undoubtedly front-line managers. Front-line managers are the managers who are most directly responsible for product production and service provision in enterprises. They are mainly responsible for supervising the actual work of each link in the whole production process and directly managing all employees engaged in actual production and service provision.

Generally speaking, 80% to 90% of employees in enterprises are managed by front-line managers, so front-line managers will have the most direct influence on other managers in enterprises in many things. Such as staff morale, work enthusiasm, work attitude, product quality, employee retention, etc. It is the responsibility of front-line managers.

In my opinion, the most important thing for the expected performance of front-line managers is to facilitate the completion of tasks. Because the front-line manager is to carry out the company's policies and objectives to the end, which is the most test of execution ability. Results-oriented is the basic principle for the assessment of front-line managers. The fundamental difference between a good organization and a bad organization lies in the achievement rate of goals.

Let's give an example. Usually in catering enterprises, we can best understand the impact of task completion on the performance of front-line managers. If you enter a restaurant and sit down, the waiter will ask you what you want to drink. You told him that water would be fine, but after ten minutes, the waiter didn't bring water.

So, you ask another waiter to bring water. Maybe I didn't come in time this time. At this time, you must think: in the waiter's view, what is their job task? Just politely ask the customer what you need. Or consult the customer's needs first, and then meet the customer's needs immediately?

Don't underestimate this detail, in fact, it depends on the standard of business completion by front-line managers and the importance attached to the implementation of standards. If the standard of a restaurant is to ask customers what they need first, and then wait until the waiter is willing to serve, will it make people feel ridiculous?

Therefore, whether catering enterprises or other companies, if the task is not completed, enterprises will really encounter big trouble. Front-line managers are the last line of defense to ensure the completion of work tasks in management, and must promote the completion of company tasks and get corresponding results.

Figuratively speaking, high-performance front-line managers should not only pay attention to the activities of building beehives, but also ensure that these beehives can produce honey. Promoting the completion of tasks is the most important performance goal of front-line managers.

Third, the method of establishing enterprise performance echelon

If an enterprise wants to achieve the best business performance, it should formulate a unique performance echelon model, rather than using a general model, let alone directly copying other enterprises'. Of course, it is not necessary to completely re-develop the performance echelon suitable for your own enterprise. Drawing lessons from the methodology summarized by the author in recent 20 years' practice, the echelon will be established soon.

1, and define the purpose of establishing a performance echelon.

The author finds that all enterprises that have successfully established performance echelon have one thing in common, that is, they clearly know what kind of performance they want.

Among some companies that I have worked for, there is a mining enterprise that wants to delegate corresponding responsibilities and powers according to the performance requirements of different management levels. This clear goal enabled them to successfully establish their own performance echelon. There is also a hotel company that wants to expand into new fields, and a pharmaceutical company that wants to reduce operating costs. These clear performance goals are the primary reason why they can establish a performance echelon.

Therefore, enterprises should spend more time analyzing and discussing what kind of performance they want to achieve before starting to establish performance echelon. In order to achieve better performance, what adjustments and improvements should be made to the enterprise's operation mode and leadership tasks? Only when the purpose of establishing performance echelon is clear, can the enterprise closely combine all management levels with the purpose to be achieved and avoid duplication and vacancy.

2. Collect, collate and analyze data.

After the purpose is clear, it is necessary to find out the performance that the enterprise needs to achieve at present, which can be solved by collecting, sorting out and analyzing data.

When collecting data, all levels must be considered. Those traditional practices that only attach importance to the opinions of a few people are the bane of establishing a performance echelon. In order to prevent the enterprise from missing a certain level, we can make a detailed list of the names of people at all levels of the enterprise to ensure that everyone from group CEO to individual contributor does not miss it, and then arrange specific interview time for everyone. The content of the interview is best related to two questions. The first question is about the job scope of the interviewer, and the second question is about the expected performance.

The design of these two questions can provide you with two different kinds of information: one is the factual answer about the interviewer's work, and through the interview, you can accurately judge whether the interviewer knows his job role in the enterprise and what kind of job he thinks he is suitable for; The other is information about the interviewee's working thinking mode and viewpoint. Respondents' answers can reflect their tendencies and views on expected performance. Only by mastering these two kinds of information at the same time can we determine the most suitable development path for enterprises.

3. Formulate and confirm performance measurement standards at all levels.

After analyzing and sorting out the above information, we can soon understand what kind of performance each class should achieve, that is, the standard to measure the performance of each management level.

After the measurement standard comes out, all management levels can have a correct understanding of their job roles and position themselves accordingly. At this point, most of the work of building performance echelon has been completed, and only the performance echelon model needs to be finally confirmed before it can be put into use.

We can find a time to confirm collectively and gather all the visitors, including the CEO. In the collective confirmation, it is easy to find * * * problems, and then discuss them in a targeted manner to improve the performance echelon. This will not only make the formulation of standards transparent and open, but also help everyone regulate their performance behavior. Now everything is ready, as long as we push this work from top to bottom within the enterprise and build a performance echelon model.

Of course, enterprises should also allow the performance echelon model to have some flexibility, and allow different work teams to adjust performance measurement standards according to their specific needs.

abstract

Tao Te Ching said: "Sages are always good at saving people, so they never abandon others; Always good at saving things, so I didn't give up. " This sentence tells us that smart people know how to find the advantages of everyone and are good at using the advantages of various things, so in their eyes, there are no useless people and things. In fact, the core work of enterprise managers is to cultivate their ability of "always being good at saving people", and accordingly establish a reasonable performance echelon to stimulate the potential of everyone in the team.

The book Performance Echelon: Let Leaders at All Levels Make Correct Performance focuses on the importance of cooperative teams in modern enterprise management and how to form a mechanism of cooperation and mutual understanding among all management levels. However, the viewpoint of performance echelon and the design of seven-tier echelon put forward in this book are relatively more suitable for large enterprises with detailed division of labor and numerous personnel, and some management levels are slightly different from the common practices of enterprises in China.

Therefore, if you are a start-up company, or your business scale is not that big, then when implementing the "performance echelon" construction, you need to reasonably simplify or improve the pyramid model proposed in the book according to your own characteristics, and mechanically copy the ideas in the book, which is likely to be self-defeating and counterproductive.

The golden sentence of "performance echelon": saints are always good at saving people, so they don't abandon people; Always be good at preserving things, so there is no abandonment.

Clarify the responsibilities of leaders at all levels, rationally allocate tasks, determine the measurement standards of performance at all levels, and establish a performance echelon.