Enhancing visibility and performance at work place

The subject line of this blog is very theoretical and subjective. Recently, I was analyzing the performance of my team and I found that four categories:

1. Some of the resources are doing nothing but showing like anything to me.
2. Some of the resources are doing nothing and hence showing nothing to me.
3. Some of the resources are doing like anything but showing nothing to me.
4. Some of the resources are doing as well as showing like anything to me.

A famous work philosophy says that 20% of your total resources will work like anything in your office. The next 40% will act and work as a normal resource and the remaining 20% will work nothing. The very famous “Pareto’s Law” (80-20 rule) also justifies this fact that one can be comfortable with his/her 80% of work force but remaining 20% can be destroyed at any day. It will not affect anywhere.

But how come the four categories listed above can be categorized as per the rules. This is where the subject line of this blog “Enhancing visibility and performance at work place” comes into the picture. Now let us break down the topic into individual words and try to understand their meanings.

First is “Enhancing” which means improving. Or in other words, we can say adding some more value additions. But one should remember the fact that improving/enhancing is a never ending exercise.

Second is “visibility” which means transparency. I personally believe the more is the visibility, the more sincere person you are. Visibility itself is invisible but the symptoms of its absence are not.

Now “performance” which means how you are working and delivering in your organization. There are performance measurement tools available whose output is any specific number which the management considers. This is because management only believes in numbers. And a number which is showing a positive side, is appreciated by the management.

Finally “Work place” which can be anything where you are working. It can be your home or office or anywhere. But here we will consider the office as your work place.

Now I believe giving a very brief overview about each word individually of my blog “Enhancing visibility and performance at work place” is more than enough to understand what we are targeting.

Let’s us discuss an anecdote here. In one of my previous organizations, I was handling a team of 10 engineers. Most of the engineers were very open with me and we were working as a team. But one of the resources in my team was very suspicious from my view and consequently from the management view. That particular guy was always not able to justify or didn’t want to justify what he was doing. The work visibility from his side was very shady. Although, the work assigned to him was clearly defined in the plan but still problem was the same. Due to this invisibility of visibility between him and the other side of the table, his performance was also getting impacted. And due to poor visibility from his side, the tasks which could be done in 10 days were being done by him in 15 days i.e. 50% of variance. This was unacceptable both for me and my supervisors and that affected his performance appraisal cycle.

Now where the problem lies? - In the system, in the process, in the boss or in that particular person? And the answer from my perspective is very difficult to select. But there is a solution and I did it with him successfully.

I prompted him to send me an e-mail before leaving for the day on daily basis about what he had done on a particular day before calling it a day. Initially he disagreed with this initiative because again he wanted not to clear the things. After a very precise discussion with him, he agreed on it. And from that day onwards, there was a clear picture about what he is doing and where he got stuck. As a responsibility of my role, I would have to jump into the area, where he got stuck, and come up with the solution. That increased the performance of that person and after that there was a crystal clear glass between me and him.

Now although it is not a very long experience of mine but what is the moral of the story? The moral is more you are visible to your management, more will be the performance level and after that more promotions, more salary, more power ……….

Anyways, I seriously insist this point that visibility plays a very crucial role in each and every area of your life. Visibility also means that one should initiate new processes, techniques, tools, and other initiatives which would help the organization to speed up the progress. If anyone of you have n number of ideas in your mind but you are not making it visible to the management, because of any reason, you himself is hindering your performance, growth and future.

Now visibility should be from both the sides. That means visibility should be upward as well as downward. Management should also be transparent to the staff at that level which is possible. Now defining that level is very tough but not impossible. Same is true with the other direction. It is tough but not impossible. In fact if you split the word “Impossible”, it itself says “I m possible”.

So finally, I would like to say that more the visibility in the system, more trust, more understanding, more clarity will come and consequently more performance that means more performance level will increase.

-- Sanat Sharma