Conclusion

Throughout this book, the focus has been providing practical advice for implementing performance management best practices  and specifically on what it really takes to implement these effectively. The goal was to help readers make informed design and implementation decisions, resulting in performance management processes that are a good fit for the organization and work well. To briefly summarize, there are six key take away points :

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The performance management system must be designed to be congruent with the organization’s specific performance management goals. 

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Any performance management system needs to be aligned with and support the organization’s direction, goals, and critical success factors. 

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Successful performance management can be instrumental in driving important outcomes and results, if it is taken advantage of and used properly. 

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The culture for performance management in the organization and the appetite of leaders, managers, and staff to engage in performance management activities must be taken into account when making decisions about the complexity of the system, time it requires, and demands it makes. A Volkswagen that helps you get around provides more value than a Mercedes that is never driven.

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Well developed, efficient tools and processes are essential to make performance management systems user friendly and well received. 

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You get out of performance management what you put in. The best developed tools and processes make no difference if users do not believe in the value of performance management and use it as the most important tool they have available to help them get work done.