Co-design performance with your management team

Posted by: on September 18th, 2020

Here are my thoughts about how we might co-design a performance initiative for our organization with a management team:

First, we consider our role. Do we wish to direct, manage (plan, hold accountable) and serve as expert? This will produce a set of outcomes we have designed.

Or do we wish to facilitate, be curious, and guide others to committing to outcomes that we have designed together as a group?

We know from research (and experience) that small groups can be transformative units of change and if we see our management team in that light, we can begin to shift the way we work with them. What if we upped our game to bring about a greater sense of purpose, perspective, energy, focus, engagement and commitment?

Here are some starter ideas to get you moving on co-designing a performance initiative with your team:

  • Ask the group, what work needs to be done, and why? This may include work as an organization, management group, individual work or work specific to a unit within the organization. Let this question settle over time but keep coming back to it.
  • Set aside the familiar tendency to suggest, or tell, or serve as expert. Do focus on asking good questions (that will be your primary role).
  • Once this is sorted out (and this may take time) ask the group to focus on the value they wish to see created through this work.
  • Ask the group to write down what is happening now and what things look will like when the work is done. Ask them to be specific. Ask them to share with their vision with the group.
  • Ask them, who else needs to be a part of this conversation?
  • And now, for the most important question. Ask the group what they are willing to commit to in order to see this change happen AND what they need from the group in order to make it happen

Links: Here is a fascinating look at the co-design process as mapped out by Kelly Ann McKercher.

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#learningorganization #co-design #performance

About Nancy J. Hess

I help leaders pioneer extraordinary change through high engagement and whole systems approaches that focus on HR and People.