What’s a good process for analyzing performance problems? What’s the best way to gather feedback?
Analyzing performance problems requires feedback from yourself and from others. Sometimes it helps to set a specific time interval to check up on your progress.
Here’s a tried and true method for thinking through and figuring out how to improve your performance.
How to Analyze Your Performance
Analyzing performance problems gives you the feedback needed to adjust your process and become more successful in the future. One way to do this is to compare your performance to someone who’s slightly better at your chosen skill. This pushes you to improve without setting the standard so high that it’s impossible to reach and becomes discouraging. Then, walk back through your plan and identify ways your performance falls short of that standard and how you can avoid that in the future.
For instance, if your manager is a clear communicator, you may compare how they provide feedback to your own method. You realize that your manager spends 10 minutes discussing each feedback point, instead of five, and you adjust your plans accordingly.
| Another Way to Analyze Your Performance Brian Moran offers another analysis method in The 12 Week Year. He says to give yourself 12 weeks to meet a goal, measuring your progress every week. To do this, you’ll track lag indicators and lead indicators. Lag indicators measure results, while lead indicators measure the steps taken to achieve those results. In our example, the lag indicator is your level of clarity, and the lead indicator is how much of your improvement plan you completed. You want to have a high success rate in both indicators to complete your improvement plan and be much clearer as a result. However, Moran says that having a high weekly success rate in just one indicator means you’re making progress, and that you can have a success rate as low as 65% and still succeed in your overall goals if you work progressively harder. This leeway may make your goals more motivating, as you’re not reaching for the impossible standard of perfection and thus are less likely to become discouraged. If you don’t have a high success rate in one or both measures, Moran suggests walking back through your plan to determine why your performance fell short. However, Moran adds that the problem may not be with your plan, but with your execution of it. If you didn’t execute your plan to the best of your ability, you may not need to adjust it. In those cases, change your behavior by trying harder to execute the plan properly. |
