There Is ROI In Nagging

Picking a controversial or intriguing title for a blog post is a pretty good way to encourage more people to read it.  Gary seems to be following this strategy when he titled his latest post “From Nag to Wag – Why Performance Management Now?” And it worked… when the title appeared in my feedreader, I immediately decided to see what it was all about.

Gary makes the case that the ROI for performance management might be difficult to measure but we should do it any way.  He asserts:

I am not big on making decisions based on faith, but there are some managerial approaches that just seem to be the right thing to do. Performance Management is one of them. Take action or don’t take action. Both choices have an ROI; and with PM my belief is the former is positive and the latter is negative.

While I agree with Gary’s conclusion, there are ways to measure the value of performance management. As I pointed out in a post last year, a research report found that 82% of companies with formal performance management systems did as well or better than their competitors while 31% of those without formal systems underperformed. (Yes, John, I remember the stats issues.)

And although I agree with Gary, I take issue with Ron’s comments on the post. (Note: This should have said “one of Ron’s comments”. And my issue is not really with Ron but with everyone that thinks that measuring is enough to fix performance.)

One more thing: It will be interesting to see if picking an odd title works.