Organisational transformation, the acceleration of artificial intelligence, the evolution of professions and skills, new ways of working, and increasing expectations from employees… Companies are currently evolving in an environment where change is no longer a temporary phenomenon but a permanent reality of transformation.
For managers, this situation creates a particularly demanding equation. They must continue to deliver results, accompany successive transformations, evolve working practices, and at the same time maintain the commitment and quality of the relationship with their teams.
In this context, a question arises forcefully: How to maintain and develop the performance of the organization even as it is constantly transforming?
At talenco, we are convinced that transformation is not an end in itself. An organization does not simply transform itself to change its tools, its organization, its methods, or even its culture. to better respond to its environment, strengthen its execution capacity and create more value.
The value of an effective management community is measured by its ability to secure performance today and to create the conditions for sustainable performance tomorrow.
This is the whole point of the performance management. It goes far beyond simply monitoring performance or evaluating employees annually; it constitutes a real system for aligning the strategy, the projects, the jobs, the management and the individual contributions around common objectives.
A renewed performance management system: a holistic and sustainable approach
To talk about «performance management» requires first of all defining what we mean by «performance». The term is sometimes spontaneously associated with financial results, profitability or productivity. However, this interpretation is far too restrictive.
1. Performance is not limited to financial results
Performance depends first and foremost on the profession, the objectives and the raison d’être of the organization.
- For a commercial company, the Growth and profitability They will naturally be important indicators.
- For a service company, the quality of the customer experience It could take a central place.
- An association can measure its performance through its social impact, while an industrial organization will also be interested in the Quality, to, at delays, At the security or to his environmental footprint.
On the other hand, an organization that does not have performance research, or at least efficiency research, would not make sense.
The performance can therefore cover simultaneously several dimensions Economic, operational, human, customer, social or environmental. It is up to each organization to define its own performance criteria and to identify the indicators.
The culture of performance is first and foremost about finding the right indicators. For an innovation company, their criterion may not be revenue. But in a retail company, this criterion is central!
Alexandre Rubin | CEO of Petit Bateau
Behind the question of KPIs lies a deeper issue: make the performance understandable and shareable. Increasing the number of dashboards does not necessarily create a culture of performance. On the other hand, selecting a few criteria that are consistent with the organization’s project allows decisions to take on meaning and the contribution of each individual to be made visible.
2. Capacity and commitment: the two driving forces of performance
The performance of an organization is based first and foremost on two complementary dimensions: the ability to act and the commitment of the employees.
The capacity, These are the resources available to the organization to succeed : its strategic assets, its know-how, its skills, its tools, its processes or even the quality of its organization. Without these fundamentals, it is difficult to deliver sustainably.
But this capacity produces performance only if it is actually mobilized. This is where it goes hand in hand with the commitment of the employees. This requires understanding the goal, knowing what is expected, and having the necessary resources. Skills necessary to act and to evolve in an environment that pays real attention to people, their working conditions and their well-being.
In other words, a successful organization does not just have the right resources; it also creates the conditions for employees to be eager and able to fully mobilize them.
Sustainable performance is therefore built through the interplay of two forces: the organization’s ability to act and the commitment of those who make it happen.
Like a virtuous cycle, performance is a source of pride and commitment. It is also generative of new capabilities.
The 4 levers of collective performance management
Although performance is multidimensional, its management can nevertheless be based on four major complementary levers. Together, they allow the strategic vision of the company to be linked to the reality on the ground and form the foundations of a true management of collective performance.
Lever 1: Execute the strategy to turn a vision into results
Companies devote a lot of energy to defining their strategic directions. Yet, Having a good strategy does not guarantee its implementation.
Between the ambitions presented by a COMEX and their translation into the daily lives of teams, priorities can multiply, arbitrages become less legible, and resources can be scattered. It is precisely in this space that the game is played.’strategic execution.
Formed from various indispensable skills, Strategic execution is emerging as a new discipline necessary for leaders, but also for the community of managers.
Managing performance then consists of transforming strategic orientations into understandable priorities, aligning teams around a few truly structuring objectives, clarifying the expected contributions, and establishing rituals to measure progress.
A strategy without execution is an illusion. (…) The ComEx must absolutely explain the strategy. It must be understood and appropriate by the intermediate managers who will generate performance.
Xavier Diry | CEO of DEKRA Claims International, citing Thomas Edison
One Strategy, Even though it is very relevant, it creates real value only when it is action taken.
Lever 2: Accelerate the performance of projects
The implementation of the strategy is now being partly materialized through projects. New SI systems, deployment of AI, new operational models, new tools, new services: project portfolios have become particularly dense.
By constantly launching new initiatives, the the risk for the organization is to disperse its resources, This can create new dependencies and sometimes slow down projects that should precisely accelerate its transformation.
The Driving performance Therefore, it is necessary not to simply look at the success of each project in isolation, but to’Arbitrate the entire portfolio Which projects truly meet the strategic priorities? Which ones need to be accelerated? Which ones can wait? What topics should focus resources on?
This ability to arbitrate also involves’accept the resignation. Not all interesting projects are necessarily prioritized at the same time.
In this regard, the role of the leader and the manager is crucial. Decide on priorities and know how to arbitrate and to give up, even temporarily.
There is indeed a clear priority list! For effective management, it is necessary to focus on a few selected topics and to allocate resources accordingly.
Jean Baptiste Gouin CEO of Talenco
Performance management is therefore also management of choices. Performance does not depend on the number of projects undertaken, but on the organization’s ability to bring those that really matter to fruition.
Lever 3: Continuously improve the business fundamentals
In companies facing constant transformations, attention naturally focuses on what needs to be changed. Yet performance also depends on the ability to continue doing well in what constitutes the core of the business and the specificities of the organization.
Transformation should not lead to neglecting the «run», that is to say, the quality of daily activity.
- For a retail brand, this means continuing to work on product quality, stock availability, commercial efficiency, or customer experience.
- In a bank, this can concern the quality of processes, processing times, or the expertise of the teams.
- In an industrial company, the fundamentals may be quality, reliability, cost, or safety.
This distinction between transformation and daily activity is essential. A company can undertake large projects and, at the same time, see its fundamentals deteriorate. Conversely, it can progress significantly through successive improvements, sometimes much less spectacular (the «small steps» theory).
The management of collective performance must therefore also instil a culture of the’continuous improvement : analyze what works, understand the differences, simplify processes, develop expertise and constantly strive to do better.
Not all changes need to take the form of a new transformation. Sustainable performance is also built through the accumulation of concrete progress in the core business fundamentals.
Lever 4: helping employees return to performance
In a more constrained economic context, where margins of maneuver are shrinking and organizations must become more efficient, situations of underperformance are increasingly questioned. When they persist, they can weigh on results, but also create a sense of unfairness within teams, especially when the workload or objectives have to be compensated by other collaborators.
The managerial challenge, however, is not to immediately punish a performance gap, but to understand what explains it and create the conditions for a return to performance. A collaborator may encounter difficulties for multiple reasons: insufficiently clear objectives, skills to be strengthened, a change in context, a lack of feedback, an inadequate work organization, or a loss of reference points.
The manager must therefore be able to address these situations early enough., This involves establishing a shared diagnosis, reminding people of their expectations and building a realistic plan for progress. This requires setting specific goals, identifying the necessary support mechanisms, regularly monitoring progress, and providing explicit feedback on the results achieved.
This approach is based on a balance between demand and support. The requirement is to prevent a situation from becoming sustainably entrenched that weakens collective performance. The support consists of providing the employee with the means to regain the expected level of performance, thanks to a adapted accompaniment, to the development of skills and to regular follow-up points.
Managing individual performance therefore means knowing how to address discrepancies without waiting for them to become structural, while at the same time giving everyone the best chance of contributing fully to collective performance.
The manager, the link between strategy, the collective and individual performance
1. Translate the strategy into priorities and drive performance on a daily basis
Strategic execution, project performance, and improvement of business fundamentals, as well as individual performance: in these 4 dimensions, an actor occupies a central place: the manager. Indeed, it is at this level that the strategy meets the real world on a daily basis.
The manager translates the general directions into priorities for his team, organizes the activity, arbitrates, monitors the results, identifies difficulties, improves practices, provides feedback, and supports employees in transformation processes. Managing performance is therefore not a HR process that is activated only a few times a year, but a continuous management practice.
This evolution comes at a time when the managers' role becomes more complex. They must to accompany change and especially the adoption of AI, dealing with it new ways of working, to develop the skills of their teams and meet increased expectations regarding autonomy, recognition and meaning, while maintaining a strong execution capacity.
Xavier Diry (Dekra) summarizes the complex role of managers in these terms:
Effective managers are those who are able to embrace change and have the necessary flexibility to cope with it.
2. Changing management practices to create the conditions for performance
Management practices must therefore also evolve. The manager can no longer be solely the one who distributes tasks or controls their execution. He or she must create the conditions for collective performance, Make priorities clear, establish the right routines, and allow teams to learn and know how to intervene quickly when a discrepancy arises.
For Alexandre Rubin (CEO of Petit Bateau), This culture is built, among other things, through exemplary behavior, the quality of the tools, and the repetition of the piloting rituals:
The leader/manager must, first of all, embody the culture of performance, secondly, ensure that the tools are effective, thirdly, establish routines.
This testimony illustrates an often underestimated dimension of performance management system Tools matter, but they alone do not create a culture of performance. This culture emerges when priorities become visible, when information circulates, and when the same questions regularly recur in management practices.
Knowing how to create these conditions for collective performance and managing performance on a daily basis thus becomes one of the core aspects of the managerial mission.
Making performance a collective discipline
The transformations will continue, and the rise of artificial intelligence will probably only accelerate the pace.
In this context, waiting for the end of a transformation to regain a stabilized functioning becomes increasingly unrealistic!
The challenge for organizations now is to develop a permanent ability to execute their strategy, To help them achieve their projects, improve their professional foundations, develop their skills and enable each employee to contribute effectively to the collective results.
That is precisely what a management of collective performance Renewed: to provide a direction, focus efforts, measure progress, arbitrate when necessary, and create the human conditions for success.
Transformation remains indispensable, but it now finds its rightful place. In an environment where transformations occur one after another, the challenge is no longer just adapting; it is also about securing performance today and developing sustainable performance tomorrow.
FAQ performance management
What is performance management?
Performance management refers to the set of practices that enable an organization to align its strategy, objectives, processes, and the contributions of its employees. It aims to secure results while sustainably developing collective performance.
What are the main levers of collective performance management?
Performance management relies on four complementary levers: executing the strategy, improving project performance, advancing the business fundamentals, and supporting the return of performance for employees when a gap appears.
What is the role of the manager in collective performance?
The manager translates the company’s objectives into concrete priorities for his or her team. He or she leads the activity, provides feedback, develops skills, arbitrates priorities, and creates the necessary conditions for employee engagement and collective performance.
What tools and processes enable performance management?
Performance management relies on clear objectives, relevant indicators, follow-up rituals, and appropriate tools. Approaches such as OKRs can facilitate alignment, prioritization, and regular measurement of progress made.
Why train managers in performance management?
The training enables managers to strengthen their skills in leadership, feedback, managing priorities, and supporting employees. It helps them balance demands and support, address performance gaps, and better link strategy and day-to-day actions.