Case Studies

High-end Furniture Maker, headcount 20-25 

Talking to a client one day in 2018, she started talking about the upcoming performance management reviews and asking me questions on how to approach it. Several rounds of back-and-forth into the conversation, I blurted out “Do you not know what “good” looks like!”, to which she responded “no, we don’t!”.  In that moment, several filaments of thoughts crystalised into one coherent idea – we would build out a framework that defined “good” for them. So we did and the framework generated all sorts of discussions, some of which started with “are we supposed to do that?” and “I didn’t know we were supposed to do that!”. 

Legal firm, headcount 90-100

The law partners of a legal firm were frustrated with having the same performance discussions every cycle, setting the same goals every cycle, and seeing very little change the following cycle. They were looking for something different and that’s definitely what they got! 

I presented them with the idea that performance management is two-fold. Phase one seeks to focus on developing the person’s knowledge, skills etc to be able to deliver all parts of their current role. Once the person is competent, the second phase should focus the employee on delivering the outputs of their role along with specific goals, that align to the firm’s goals. So for a legal firm, that might be to draft complex clauses aligned with a client’s needs (an expected output of role) and engage in business development activities (goes to supporting the firm’s growth goals).