performance management & career development
Who gets excited about rolling out a performance management (and career development) process? Me. I believe that long-term, if we want to drive the best outcomes for our patients, we need a highly collaborative, interdisciplinary team from our clinical and medical providers to the folks who manage the front desk and answer the phones. Everyone has a role in delivering an exceptional patient experience. Our people are our greatest asset, so we need to treat them as such.
Just as our job as a provider organization is to collaboratively develop treatment plans to improve the lives of our patients, it’s incumbent on leaders and managers to work collaboratively with the folks on their team to develop individualized development plans.
it’s in everyone’s best interest (even when it’s ugly)
An annual performance review (and career development meeting) is one component of the larger management system at the Advaita Collective. Ideally, there should not be any major surprises during a performance review. You should meet with your supervisor regularly (weekly, biweekly, or monthly). Those meetings, coupled with real-time feedback, should leave most people knowing where they stand before a formal review. That said, as we roll out a new management system, we will undoubtedly uncover a lot of issues, such as not meeting frequently with your supervisors. The performance management process is a practice, not a performance. The goal is not to have a great annual review, it’s to give and receive actionable feedback that helps you improve and improves the lives of others.
Key Points:
The performance management process is designed to (1) help you become more effective in your role, thus improving your life, and (2) help your supervisor better support you, while developing their managerial skillset.
Communicate with clarity (data) and kindness.
Transparency is about radical candor.
Radical Candor = Care Personally + Challenge Directly
Take the long view: how can I use this to improve over time?
Remember, this is an ongoing process. We are just getting started.
background: fairness
I’ve become fixated on creating an equitable organization. Sure, that’s everyone’s goal, but what does that mean? The fairness/equitability question has two components: (1) the external market and (2) the internal consistency.
To assess fairness relative to the external market, it’s a simple question of whether our compensation and expectations of a role make it easy or difficult to fill the position. If we can quickly fill a position with a qualified candidate at a compensation level that works with our business model, then we’ve positioned ourselves well in the external market. The internal consistency is much more complex, in my opinion. This requires comparing the compensation, performance, and expectations of folks in the same positions and in various departments. For example, some positions are naturally higher paying than others (that’s just the external job market), but how valuable is someone’s contribution to the organization? Is it perfectly correlated with compensation? Nope – that’s a pipe dream. That said, to ensure internal consistency, you can look at people in different positions with approximately equivalent compensation and ask the question, “Which position would be harder to fill/more detrimental to lose?” If two people each make about $60,000/year, but one would be much harder to fill, it may deserve higher compensation. Two years of running a medical practice has taught me that the administrative team bears a significant, often under-appreciated burden.
One note on meta-equitability…The world isn’t fair. We will always be at the mercy of more powerful forces than our idealistic version of “how the world should be.” That said, we can do our best to cultivate the conditions for a meritocratic, equitable organization.
deliberately developmental: interdependent success
I have to assume that 99-100% of great organizations take human resources (HR) seriously. HR includes everything from recruiting and onboarding to compensation and benefits analysis, but the aspect that excites me the most is workforce management. Specifically, I love working towards being a deliberately developmental organization, i.e., a company that “systematically works to drive individual human flourishing and organizational growth as part of one interdependent and mutually reinforcing set of goals.”
Having a process to manage performance and support career growth is the company’s responsibility. Thus, we’re rolling out a process that helps ensure that each team member gets regular feedback and compels managers to be more invested in the careers of their teams.
A note on upward mobility: 21st-century leaders must focus on how their organization creates upwardly mobile paths for everyone. The market isn’t fair. The game is rigged. Capitalism doesn’t deliver on its meritocratic ideals, but that doesn’t mean that leaders just throw up their hands and say, “Nothing we can do, the market is the market.” It means we must do the hard work of aligning the organization's goals with means for individuals to make more money.
through the lens of our values
I try to look through the lens of our core values for every major decision. Rolling out a (professionalized) performance management system is a no-brainer. Below is how I see our core values interacting with a performance management system.
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We need to know how others perceive our contributions and performance. If we think we’re kicking ass, but our supervisor is frustrated with us, we need that feedback. Knowing, in as close to real-time as possible, how we’re performing is grounding.
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The most natural value regarding performance reviews is accountability. While an upcoming performance review can invoke anxiety, the better we give and receive actionable feedback, the quicker we can grow/help others grow. Accountability is also about ensuring that individuals are upholding their agreements with the company and vice versa (you agree to do X, I agree to do/pay Y). Description text goes here
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Our performance management system is designed to increase transparency. Successful performance management (and feedback generally) requires a supervisor-supervisee relationship that is characterized by (1) caring personally and (2) challenging directly. There should be no stone left uncovered after an annual review.
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There’s nothing that strengthens a relationship like a candid, vulnerable conversation. Ideally, that’s the tone of every performance review – it’s a safe space to give and receive feedback. While the thought of having/conducting a performance review may feel hierarchical at first, the promise is that over time the system becomes more refined and effective at bringing folks into alignment.
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Our performance management system aims to provide the information necessary for individuals to reach their full potential. If done correctly, each quarterly conversation builds on the last (and on feedback between reviews) to empower supervisees with all of the information they need to successfully perform their job and grow in their career.
Advaita Collective performance management & career development system
In addition to annual performance reviews, our system is designed to encourage transparent, timely communication throughout the course of work. There should be no surprised in annual reviews, once we’re fully up and running (it’ll take a quarter or two).
Manager’s are expected to meet regularly with all of their direct reports (one-to-one meetings) and conduct quarterly conversations (abridged annual review).
The annual review has three main components: (1) job performance evaluation, (2) company values alignment, and (3) general professionalism and competency.
Job Performance: This is based on the individual’s job description, core functions, provider agreements, and/or assigned key performance indicators.
Values Alignment: This section is designed to give qualitative feedback to the individual regarding how well their actions appear to be aligned with the Company’s core values.
Professionalism & Competency: This section is designed to give the individual feedback regarding general professionalism and competency guidelines to make them more effective in any professional setting.
in sum + looking ahead
I absolutely loathed anything deemed a “process” when I was in the Army. This is just the first step in implementing a well-rounded performance management and career development system. I want us to build a sustainable, healthy culture that increases flourishing for our team. Here’s a peak and what else we’ll be rolling out…
Q1 2024: Everyone has updated job descriptions and has received an annual performance review.
Q2 2024: Everyone has completed a personal-professional development plan. All individuals will have a “quarterly conversation,” which is an abbreviated annual review.
Q3 2024: We will roll out a 360 review survey that collects and aggregates information from the company's supervisors, peers, and others. Everyone will have a quarterly conversation.
Q4 2024: We’ll roll out the first Advaita Collective Survey, giving us space to provide specific feedback on everything from our compensation and benefits to the culture to help guide our leadership team’s decision-making.
