MGT 101: Performance Management, Strategy, and Decisions

Course Overview and Icebreaker

• Class Agenda Framework:
  • 1. CONNECT: Ten Things icebreaker activity.
  • 2. MANAGE: Performance management principles and practices.
  • 3. PLAN: Organizational strategy and goal alignment.
  • 4. DECIDE: Managerial decision-making models.
  • 5. APPLY: Campus Grounds team case study and exit ticket.
• Icebreaker Activity: Ten Things:
  • Task: Identify $10$ shared traits or experiences common to every member of the group.
  • Exclusions: Exclude obvious shared facts (e.g., all being human, enrolled in MGT 101, or attending the University of Nebraska-Lincoln / UNL).
  • Target Categories: Focus on shared experiences across places visited, unusual foods eaten, specific hobbies, personal experiences, or pets.
  • Presentation: Select one unique or surprising commonality to share with the entire class.

The Organization as a Management System

• System Integration: Performance management connects individual employee work directly to overall organizational outcomes (adapted from OpenStax Management, Exhibit 4.18).
• System Components:
  • External Environment: Identifies environmental opportunities and threats.
  • Leadership: Articulates organizational vision, mission, and core values.
  • Strategy: Establishes organizational goals and competitive choices.
  • Organization: Defines organizational structure, people, and internal systems.
  • Outcomes: Measures operational results across financial, social, and ethical dimensions.

Performance Management Framework

• Definition: A continuous managerial process designed to align individual employee performance directly with overarching organizational goals.
• Four Phases of Performance Management:
  1. Planning: Setting explicit performance goals and establishing expectations.
  2. Monitoring: Continuously tracking progress and providing ongoing feedback.
  3. Reviewing: Evaluating cumulative results and creating development plans.
  4. Rewarding: Offering formal recognition and fostering professional growth opportunities.

Goal Setting and Expectation Management

• Quality Comparison of Performance Expectations:
  • Strong Expectation:
    • Statement: "Complete the weekly inventory report by noon Friday with fewer than two errors."
    • Attributes: Clearly defines the expected result, includes an explicit quantitative measure, sets a firm deadline, and directly connects to the employee's specific role.
  • Weak Expectation:
    • Statement: "Do a better job with inventory."
    • Limitations: Open to subjective interpretation, difficult to measure objectively, and lacks a shared definition of success.
• Cascading Goals Alignment:
  • Function: Clarifies how individual task contributions roll up to achieve organizational success.
  • Organizational Goal: Improve customer retention.
  • Team Goal: Reduce response time.
  • Employee Goal: Resolve $90\%$ of assigned cases within $24\text{ hours}$.

Performance Monitoring and Multi-Dimensional Measures

• Essential Measurement Categories:
  • Results: Assesses what was achieved (e.g., sales volume, product/service quality, adherence to deadlines).
  • Behaviors: Assesses how the work was executed (e.g., active teamwork, quality of service, safety protocol compliance).
  • Development: Assesses what capability is expanding (e.g., acquisition of new technical skills and taking on expanded responsibilities).
• Check-in Frequency: Regular, frequent check-ins allow managers to detect and correct minor performance gaps before they compound into serious operational problems.

Effective Feedback and the Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) Model

• Core Principles of Effective Feedback:
  • Timely: Delivered as close in time to the observed event as possible.
  • Specific: Grounded in observable, factual behavior rather than general impressions.
  • Balanced: Reinforces existing performance strengths while constructively addressing skill or behavior gaps.
  • Actionable: Clearly outlines concrete next steps for improvement or maintenance.
  • Primary Purpose: Helps the employee understand precisely what behaviors to continue, modify, or eliminate.
• Situation-Behavior-Impact (SBI) Framework:
  • S - Situation: Pinpoints the specific time and place where the event occurred.
  • B - Behavior: Describes the observable action taken by the individual.
  • I - Impact: Details the specific outcome or result produced by the behavior.
  • Concrete Example: "During today's team exercise, you invited two quieter members to speak, which gave us better options."

Handling Poor Performance

• Five-Step Coaching and Improvement Protocol:
  1. CLARIFY: Restate original expectations and present clear objective evidence of the performance gap.
  2. DIAGNOSE: Identify whether the root cause stems from gaps in skills, resources, motivation, or role clarity.
  3. SUPPORT: Provide appropriate corrective support, including targeted coaching, training, or equipment resources.
  4. DOCUMENT: Establish written action items, quantifiable evaluation measures, and review dates.
  5. FOLLOW UP: Monitor progress to recognize performance improvement or implement formal administrative action.

Rewards and Employee Motivation

• Primary Workplace Drivers:
  • Recognition: Signals to the workforce which specific actions and behaviors are valued.
  • Growth: Expands employee skills and creates tangible career progression pathways.
  • Pay and Promotion: Direct financial and status rewards for sustained high-level contributions.
  • Meaningful Work: Establishes a direct connection between daily personal effort and overarching organizational purpose.
• Optimization: Rewards yield the highest motivational impact when employees fully comprehend the direct link between their performance and reward outcomes.

Performance-Review Errors and Managerial Biases

• Common Cognitive Biases:
  • Halo Effect: Allowing a single standout strength to positively bias an employee's overall evaluation across all performance dimensions.
  • Recency Bias: Overemphasizing recent performance events while ignoring the broader accomplishments across the entire review period.
  • Leniency or Severity: Systematically rating all employees higher than deserved (leniency) or lower than deserved (severity).
  • Similarity Bias: Demonstrating unfair preference toward employees who share personal characteristics, background traits, or work styles similar to the manager.
• Fairness Mitigation: Utilizing objective performance evidence, maintaining standardized rating criteria, and keeping regular evaluation notes minimizes bias.

Strategic Planning Frameworks

Vision, Mission, and Objectives

• Strategic Hierarchy (adapted from OpenStax Management, Exhibit 9.6):
  • VISION: Answers "Why do we exist?"
    • Example: Make people happy.
  • MISSION: Answers "How do we do that?"
    • Example: Offer quality entertainment.
  • OBJECTIVE: Answers "What will we do?"
    • Example: Release three movies this year.

SMART Goals Model

• SMART Criteria (adapted from OpenStax Management, Exhibit 9.10):
  • S: Specific
  • M: Measurable
  • A: Achievable
  • R: Relevant
  • T: Time-bound
• Goal Transformation Example:
  • Vague Statement: "Improve customer service"
  • SMART Goal Statement: "Raise customer satisfaction from $82\%$ to $88\%$ by December 31"

Levels of Strategic Planning

• Planning Hierarchy (adapted from OpenStax Management, Exhibit 9.13):
  • Strategic Planning:
    • Focus Question: Why?
    • Leadership Level: Top managers.
    • Scope: Defines long-term strategic direction and overall scope.
  • Tactical Planning:
    • Focus Question: What?
    • Leadership Level: Middle managers.
    • Scope: Directs resource allocation and functional priorities.
  • Operational Planning:
    • Focus Question: How?
    • Leadership Level: Frontline managers.
    • Scope: Governs daily operations, work schedules, and localized measures.

Management Skills across Organizational Levels

• Distribution of Core Managerial Skills (adapted from OpenStax Management, Exhibit 1.6):
  • First-Line Managers: Require high Technical and Human skills, supported by baseline Conceptual skills.
  • Middle Managers: Require a balanced distribution across Technical, Human, and Conceptual skills.
  • Executive Managers: Require high Conceptual and Human skills, relying less on daily operational Technical skills.
  • Key Insight: Human relationship skills remain critical across every tier of management.

The Managerial Decision Process

• Six-Step Decision Framework (adapted from OpenStax Management, The Decision-Making Process):
  1. RECOGNIZE: Define the decision scope and identify the problem.
  2. GENERATE: Formulate multiple alternative action plans.
  3. ANALYZE: Evaluate options against objective evidence and criteria.
  4. SELECT: Choose the optimal alternative based on evaluation criteria.
  5. IMPLEMENT: Execute the plan by assigning responsibilities and resources.
  6. EVALUATE: Assess results to measure actual effectiveness against goals.

Applied Case Study and Class Discussion

Case Scenario: Campus Grounds Performance Problem

• Context: Campus Grounds is experiencing significant operational decline and service quality complaints.
• Identified Operational Problems:
  • Customer wait times expanded from $5\text{ minutes}$ to $11\text{ minutes}$.
  • Employee turnover rate is consistently escalating.
  • Online customer feedback reports slow operational service and incorrect, inconsistent order fulfillment.
• Available Managerial Resources & Scope:
  • Capital Allocation: $\$20,000$ budget.
  • Time Horizon: One academic semester to correct performance.
• Required Practical Deliverables:
  1. Define one specific performance expectation for employees.
  2. Select one quantitative result measure and one qualitative behavior measure.
  3. Draft an SBI (Situation-Behavior-Impact) feedback statement targeted at an employee behavior.
  4. Recommend one actionable coaching or structural support initiative.

Discussion and Debrief Questions

• Team Review Questions:
  • What specific performance expectation was established?
  • Which performance measures were chosen to track improvement?
  • How does the structured feedback support employee growth and behavior modification?
• Critical Thinking Prompt:
  • Which phase of the performance management cycle (Planning, Monitoring, Reviewing, Rewarding) is most frequently neglected by managers, and what are the specific organizational consequences when it is skipped?