Personal Performance Management

Managing our own performance can be powerful and will be better than someone else doing it.

What Success Looks Like

When you're successful, you'll know it, and so will your leader? Or will you? Or will they?

When you state what success looks like, it makes it obvious. It reveals what you and your leader think. If you can agree upon something put in concrete terms, you have something to work toward. Without that, you can only hope to accomplish an unknown standard by luck or approximation.

Aiming at a Goal

We all like feeling that we're improving. We're likely active in learning and bringing our new skills online. But there's so much out there -- what do we choose, and how do we focus?

It's easy to be ever learning and never coming to a knowledge of what we really want or need.

Instead of a shotgun approach, we can zero in on something and aim directly at what is worthwhile to us. Once we've aimed, the effort of our forward motion is focused and efficient. We gain improvement and are not merely busy.

Measurement Magnifies

When we honestly reflect on our progress, we learn how we're tracking toward our goals. What we learn may be uncomfortable, especially if we see more clearly how we're still deficient. Still, that's empowering to know. What we observe can also be glorious, when we realize how far we've come and what we've accomplished.

Measurement will spur us onward and help us desire to keep acting in our own best interest. As Thomas S. Monson has said, "When performance is measured, performance improves. When performance is measured and reported back, the rate of improvement accelerates.""

The Personal Touch

Management is so much better tasting when we do it ourselves. This is compared to some sterile management by objective or some heavy-handed personal improvement program.

If we engage in our own management proactively, it can be on our own terms. We won't be waiting to be acted upon. We will establish, work toward, and accomplish the improvements we and trusted friends see we would benefit from. We will create a personal regiment that is effective for us.

Do you manage your own performance? Why or why not?