Page 190 - Just Promoted A 12 Month Road Map for Success in Your New Leadership Role

Assessing Your Organization’s Health 175

Performance standards should be customized to the job and should provide
information on the tasks and the standards of accomplishments for individual
performers. As such, they are more helpful than job or role descriptions alone.
Reviewing the yearly performance plans of people in your new department
gives a sense of their capabilities. What does their leader think they are capa-
ble of? Performance goals indicate which high-priority department tasks must
be accomplished within the year. Update these tasks with your direct reports.
Are projects on schedule? Will project members accomplish their goals? Is the
project still worth doing? Where confidential personal and human resources
information is involved, you or your managers should have the only access to
employee information of this kind. The task force working in this area should
provide you with a candid evaluation of how the performance management
practices throughout your organization are working and what can be improved.

Talent Acquisition and Staffing Levels
Is your company an employer of choice? Within the company, is the team or
the function you lead well respected, and do they attract internal and exter-
nal talent? Does your organization and team have an attractive talent brand?
What is the buzz? Check the recruitment and selection process. How is talent
recruited? Is the talent acquisition process set up to recruit outstanding peo-
ple? If not, why? What is the real cost of hiring just qualified or unqualified
people (that is, in mistakes they make and in lost productivity to managers
and trainees alike)?
Is there a human resources staffing plan? Does the human resources plan
fit the organization’s long-term plan? Does it anticipate the types of skills the
organization will need to help the company meet its long-term plans? Are per-
sonnel being recruited to help achieve the long-term plan? In a small con-
sulting firm, two-thirds of the business consisted of training programs and
materials designed to increase the performance of their clients. But the firm’s
probable future strategic direction consisted of management and leadership
development and data-based information systems. Who should the company
be hiring: people for the old business, who could help with the present heavy
workload, or people for the future business, for whom there was not yet a full
workload? Should the company’s top people be developing the new product
line, or should they continue to lend the old line their strength and experience
to keep it healthy and profitable while others develop the new products? What