A UK media company

Performance management initiative: media group, UK

We met with the Group CEO in December 2006.  The initial enquiry had been made to their lawyers who recommended us an expert provider.  The lawyers were involved in the early discussions and in the initial intervention itself.  

The background to the intervention was that the heads of the companies making up the group had resolved amongst themselves that performance management should be a key strategic focus in the forthcoming year.  Our initial analysis was that this group (the senior leaders) should be the subject of an intervention with the following objectives:

• to underline the importance of performance management (in terms of risk management and people development);
• to recognise the crucial role that they individually as senior leaders play in determining whether the process is taken at all seriously in their organisation;
• to perceive performance as a function of treatment or management and not simply a function of ability – to question the knee jerk assumptions that we frequently make;
• to provide some tools to use in the management of performance;
• to increase both their confidence and skill level for such meetings; and
• to enthuse them to follow through a performance management initiative in their organisation.

We worked with those responsible for People Development to ensure that we put together an intervention that was consistent with what was already happening in the various group companies and culturally resonant.

The intervention comprised a full day’s session for the group of eight leaders.  We combined a couple of powerful group exercises with an actor based learning session in which the actor played a carefully devised character who represented key (behavioural) challenges for the organisation.  The delegates engaged fully with the character and the intervention was seen as a major success.   We subsequently ran the same session for the next level of leaders in various of the group companies and were then asked into two of the (larger) group companies to conduct further workshops.  In one we have run half day workshops comprising the key elements of the initial intervention but tailored to their structure for all senior people managers in the organisation.

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