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Performance Nail Biters and Annoyances - Internal Root Causes
Mike Coonrod, sbjLive Producer

Performance Nail Biters and Annoyances - Internal Root Causes

Posted online

Are you looking for reasons why you aren’t achieving your business goals? Sherry Coker, Executive Director at the OTC Center for Workforce Development, says to make sure you’re addressing the root problem and not just a symptom. She goes through symptoms, internal root causes, and solutions to address the gap between your expectations and employee performance. Go to workforce.otc.edu/solutions for more information. This is sponsored content.

Duration: 2:13

Video Transcription:

- Are you wondering why performance is not matching your expectations and business goals? Some of those causes are internal to your organization, and some are internal to the person.

I'm Sherry Coker with the OTC Center for Workforce Development. As you're looking for reasons why performance isn't meeting business goals, I'd like to give you one possible area to consider so that you address the root problem rather than a symptom.

Let me give you four root causes that fall into this category for you to consider. Insufficient clarity of performance expectations, role confusion between people in differing jobs, job structure preventing desired performance, and finally, insufficient authority to perform the job.

Now you may already recognize that one of these is a cause of your problem. But the reality is, most of us can't until we explore the symptoms. Now here's my suggestions on how to do just that.

Ask questions. It takes conversations with your business clients to find out why they aren't buying more products or services and then translating that into areas to improve performance.

From there, start asking questions of your employees, both your peak performers and your typical producers. Send out some questionnaires asking why product orders are late, why product returns are so high, or why we are experiencing shipping delays. Asking questions of the people responsible for these results will give you the insights you need to determine if the people don't understand their role or what's even expected of them. Identifying the problem is 75% of the solution.

Once you identify it and start meeting with your employees, they're going to be your best source for solutions. Solutions may involve things like rewriting job descriptions, redesigning work processes, removing work environment barriers, or developing employees to make sound decisions within new authority limits.

Partnering with external experts with the experience in root cause analysis and proposing solutions can help you avoid making costly assumptions, provide objectivity, as well as bring the expertise to develop training programs to help you attain peak performance.

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