For a company, the reason for working is to produce value. So, we can measure the performance of individual employees and the company's overall performance.
For overall performance, Issor Zineb concludes that:
In short, performance is a complex, multi-dimensional concept that integrates different dimensions to define it and measurement indicators because it remains a matter of perception. Not all players have the same perception of performance. It is relative to the company's vision, strategy, and objectives. In this sense, a company's performance can be measured from several angles and is not limited solely to its financial dimension. To assess it, it is necessary to measure all its dimensions and rely on its determining factors to improve it.[1]
We're quite close to the issue of nations finding themselves increasingly constrained by the single measure of gross domestic product (GDP).
Individual performance is another matter. For a very long time, this performance value existed in the form of material production: a garment, an object, a painting, a car, but since the relocation of industries to Asian countries, the professional activity of a large proportion of European workers has shifted towards the tertiary sector, the production, and maintenance of services.
Under these conditions, the definition of performance had to change. It could no longer be simply a question of productivity but rather the evaluation of informal work that was much more difficult to break down and, therefore, to measure. The origin of strengths and weaknesses became a real headache for managers with only mechanical performance evaluation models.
Is work assessment a matter of judging the result of work or measuring it? To judge is to form an opinion, a point of view, an opinion, an idea, or an appreciation of the result of a job. To measure is to determine the value of certain quantities by comparison with a constant quantity of the same kind taken as a standard or unit. Since we don't know how to measure work, we must judge it.[2]
To judge work, we need to know what it is. And in a system undergoing perpetual change, no one can claim to know enough to judge it... except the consulting agency that's driving the change!
These notions of corporate performance both have a strong impact on employee motivation.
If a company lives and breathes profit, and if this is confirmed by the dividends it distributes to shareholders, there's a good chance that employee commitment will suffer.
Suppose individual performance is assessed solely on production results without considering the systemic reality of this work. In that case, it's obvious that employees will look for strategies of camouflage and deception to guarantee KPIs.
Yet the question of individual performance has remained focused on pure productivity. While research has been conducted on the factors behind performance, very little has been done to define its content.
To evaluate performance, we need to assess the content of the effort made. But it is also necessary to evaluate the influences of the environment. This environment is increasingly VUCA[3], whether economic, social, or political.
In the '90s, Campbell proposed an 8-dimensional definition of performance:
This was a first step towards understanding the reality of work as an activity under influence and constraints other than those implicit in it.
In 2003, Motowidlo took the subject further, considering that performance results from activities and cannot be reduced to a job description.
Work performance is defined as the total value expected by the organization from the episodes of discrete behaviors performed by an individual over a given period [4]
This definition has the advantage of taking the view that performance is primarily concerned with the individual's effort (labor) and not just with the result produced.
Indeed, if we equate performance solely with the individual's results, we run the risk of ignoring the contextual factors that help or hinder the individual in carrying out his or her work (availability and quality of equipment, strategic and operational decisions beyond the individual's control, market situation, etc.)[5]
For an individual, performance can, therefore be divided into two categories:
In 2003, Mitchell and Daniels proposed a general model of work motivation leading to performance[6]
In achieving performance, they identify the factors that interact with motivation:
Based on these various considerations, I propose this definition of performance, or rather, a symbolic formula of the ingredients of performance:
First, there are skills. These naturally affect task performance and also have a major impact on motivation.
Studies on performance as a multidimensional result, including the individual and his environment, are still relatively recent. But above all, they apply first and foremost to the individual himself.
Studies on team performance are much rarer, and none integrate all available data. There are still many areas of investigation to be discovered to define team performance factors.
There is, however, a tendency to point to aspects of routinization within teams, which tend to influence their performance.
These routines are created on three complementary levels[7] :
This routinization also has undesirable effects that can arise when the team is left without countermeasures:
Another approach to group performance focuses on its organization and interpersonal structure.
If the group is small, we find that proposing a mesh topology is more effective, enabling each person to exchange with another through a direct link.
But if the group grows, it will be more efficient to consider a node topology (nodal) or SPOC (Single Point Of Contact) to simplify information gathering.
This structural approach to team organization has a major influence not only on productivity but also on a company's communication, creativity, and innovation.
This is the idea put forward by Melvin Conway as early as 1967:
Organizations that design systems [...] inevitably produce designs that are copies of their organization's communication structure.[8]
There is no integrative, scientific model of group and team performance in business to date.
The common mistake is to turn to the world of sports, where numerous coaches offer visions that can be applied to the corporate world. The military and paramilitary world also offers a vision of optimizing team strengths.
All these models respond to production contexts that have little to do with corporate reality. Employees are unlikely to encounter an adversary, a rival team, or an enemy during work. And even if tensions exist within a department, confrontational methods are unlikely to ease them.
Competition is limited in time and space, with perfectly identified teammates, and above all, with very strict rules. In the world of work, the duration is often unknown, the rules are soft and can be circumvented or diverted, and the team-mates are changeable and not always identified.
Tan Daoqi's Thirty-Six Stratagems or Sun Wu's Art of War are not the right references for a corporate motivation strategy.
Yet what unites these three contexts (business, sport, and war) is the challenge, a strong dopamine stimulus that fortifies the bonds between participants. In this respect, adversity indeed has a revealing effect on a workgroup's cohesion and team spirit.
But this type of extreme experience must be approached with intelligence. Putting a team in an emergency simply to increase cohesion, as in some team-buildings, can create a rejection effect on the part of certain talents whose temperament has no appetite for stress and social tension.
It's important to remember that the athlete has chosen to compete, just as the soldier has accepted the idea of war. An employee has not embarked on an adventure of struggle and combat. And to believe that this ability is inherent to one's profession is a serious management error.
[1] Issor Zineb, "La performance de l'entreprise : un concept complexe aux multiples dimensions", Projectics / Proyéctica / Projectique, 2017/2 (n°17), p. 93-103. DOI : 10.3917/proj.017.0093. URL: https://www.cairn.info/revue-projectique-2017-2-page-93.htm
[2] Dejours Christophe, L'évaluation du travail à l'épreuve du réel. Critique des fondements de l'évaluation. Éditions Quæ, "Sciences en questions", 2003, URL: https://www.cairn.info/--.htm
[3] Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity
[4] Motowidlo (2003)
[5] Les déterminants psychologiques de la performance au travail. Un bilan des connaissances et proposition de voies de recherche" Brigitte Charles-Pauvers, Nathalie Comeiras, Dominique Peyrat-Guillard, Patrice Roussel P3
[7] Belmondo Cécile, Deltour François, Sargis-Roussel Caroline, "La performance des groupes de travail. Une analyse par le capital social et la routinisation", Revue française de gestion, 2015/2 (N° 247), pp. 11-25. URL: https://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-de-gestion-2015-2-page-11.htm
[8] Melvin E. Conway, "How do Committees Invent?", Datamation, vol. 14, April 1968