2.140 Your First Performance Management System in 30 Days

Are you managing or just hoping? 

If your team has grown from five to twenty people and performance is running on memory and gut feel, this episode gives you a simple system you can roll out in thirty days. No complex software. Just a clear rhythm that creates better conversations and better results. 

In this episode you will learn 
• The purpose of reviews in a growing business and how to keep them about growth and clarity 
• A light structure that uses quarterly conversations plus one annual wrap 
• A conversation first template that drives real dialogue without extra paperwork 
• How to link performance and potential for fair decisions without heavy grids 
• A practical 30 day rollout plan any manager can lead 
• The metrics that show your system is working and the pitfalls to avoid 

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Transcript

Transcript 

Are you managing or just hoping if your team has grown from 5 to 20 people performances running on memory, gut feel, maybe some crossed fingers, then this episode is for you. Happy New Year and welcome to Episode 140 which is our first one of 2026 and today I thought it would be good timing to discuss how you can create a simple performance system and whether you call that performance reviews or performance management. But a way that you can systematically. 
Review and recognise the performance of your staff and I'm going to do this for any growing business and how you can roll it out in 30 days without having complex software. No really long forms and just having that clear rhythm so that we have better conversations. 
Which will lead to better results. So I'll give you the why, the structure, some templates and a step by step rollout plan so that you can have a clear path that scales as you grow. So let's start with thinking about what is. 
The actual problem that we're trying to solve because when we move beyond about 15 people, that's when the ad hoc approach breaks and managers will have different expectations. Feedback is late or it's not at all pay and promotion decisions become inconsistent. 
And people that are working for you are just unsure how they're going, which means that things don't go quite the way they should, and leaders feel like they're firefighting now, having performance reviews alone isn't going to fix performance. 
You know what really makes performance go really efficiently in businesses is having a simple system that sets expectations, builds coaching and keeps the right rhythm. So we want to start with what is the purpose of our performance review system. You know, before you create any template. 
Like decide what it is that these reviews are meant to achieve and keep it really short and share it with people and it could be just three things. We want clear expectations and useful feedback for everyone that works for us. 
We want better development and career conversations to build everyone's capability and we want fair and consistent decisions on paying promotions. So whatever yours are, just write up to three points down and then put them at the top of your template because then each review discussion you can start by reviewing them to help. 
We just reset everyone that this is about growth. It's not about getting a score and it also gives you a good way to check later. Is the system working the way that we want it to? Is it actually delivering these outcomes or do we need to adjust? 
So once we know what the purpose is, we want to set the basic structure, so we want just a consistent rhythm that every manager can run without needing their HR person or someone else to keep prompting them. So frequency the research is really clear and I know. 
Know that people hate it when I say this, but it is about having quarterly one on ones. And if you can't spend an hour with your employees talking about performance and development, then you need to look at why that is. It's not a huge time investment given. 
The payoff? So go back to those outcomes that we're looking for. So we want to have a quarterly one on one performance conversations and then just one slightly more formal review maybe once a year and we want to make sure that the employees and the managers, the direct managers. 
Other ones in those conversations, if you have an HR partner, they will support you with training tools, coaching, but they don't run the meeting and in terms of focus, the meeting should be future focus, which is also we want quarterly. If you're only doing it every six months or every 12 months. 
You are you already talking about the last month or two anyway, so I wanted to be future focused, lean into a coaching style and lead us just asking you how are you going? What's the next steps, not just going, OK well, what went wrong last quarter that goes back to that feedback that we need to have at the time. 
And we want to do some documentation of just a couple of practical things. So in terms of the instructions that we're giving people, we want to talk about how long each review should be. So every quarter should be 45 to 60 minutes because you want some space for reflection and feedback and planning. 
It's a good idea to have them happen at the same months every year for everyone. So for example, having reviews in March, June and September and then the annual wrap up in November because having shared months makes it easy to plan and support your managers. 
And recording the outcome should just be a really simple one or two pages if you need to template or an online form. No war and peace narratives, no scoring, or at least no heavy scoring, no ranked scoring. 
And you know when everyone knows the rhythm and the time commitment that they can plan, and so then hopefully you won't get those complaints. Oh gosh, it's quarterly. It's only 45 minutes to an hour every quarter. It also means that employees know the rhythm and they can prepare. 
They know what to do in advance, which brings me to the forms. The whole point of your performance reviews should be the conversation and not the form. Make sure that you use that in any of your training and communication to get that mindset right. It is really important. So we want to use a conversation first template. We want to reduce paperwork and increase the amount of time that we're actually talking for, you know, ironically long forms lead to shorter conversations. So here's a lightweight structure that you can copy. Just give your employees 3 prompts before the meeting. 
What achievements are you most proud of in this period? What's been the most challenging or what's getting in your way and what skills or experience would you like to develop next and then give the manager 3 prompts. In overall performance. What's going well? Does anything need to change? 
How is the employee tracking to role expectations and their goals? And what is the suggested development actions? What training? What mentoring, what stretch tasks, and then for the meeting together you agree on three parts, the 1st is. 
Some goals three to five, no more clear goals for the next period. So this is our future focus. So we're going to be specific and measurable and align it to those business priorities. We want to talk about the support that the employee needs from the manager or from the business. We want to remove those blockers, agree on resources. 
And we want to talk about any career aspirations or even if there is no career aspirations, that's fine. Are there any developmental ideas that we have and it can be easy things. You're listening to a podcast, reading an article. It doesn't need to be going on into a training course. 
And we want to keep the template to one page for the conversation and then if you want one page for notes, you could do that. I recommend just having small boxes for notes because again, we want it about the conversation, so we want to put prompts so that people can write something but discourage them from writing. 
Essays. So optional. Next step for your management team, which I do highly recommend is to also assess the potential of all of your people and not just the performance once a year. Because having this simple internal view helps to guide decisions around your people. 
And can help leaders consider their people in a different way. So we're not just asking our employees how they want to develop, but we're also being proactively involved in their development. And you know, we call this talent matrices, some people call them nine blockers or 9 box exercises. People, analysers, you know, they're all very similar, but you just do this process alongside managers and as HR partners. We often do this with the managers and I definitely recommend having a skilled third party to assist because it's pretty simple. But having a third party can ask the right questions of the manager and draw out an action. 
Saying that will help with the retention of key people. So the way that we do it is we rate overall performance for the period is it below expectations? Is it meeting or is it exceeding and then we rate their potential, is it low, medium or high and potential is about the ability to step up or grow into new roles in the next one? 
For two years, and we also want to ask ourselves, would I enthusiastically rehire this person into this job and this helps you to identify the top people in your business that you need to retain and stretch across the organisation. It highlights people who need more support or a clearer plan. 
And it gives you a starting point for succession and development without needing huge onerous processes. It also really helps managers to hone their leadership and coaching skills because what falls out of this is generally managers need to have career conversations with their top performers, which they haven't done before. 
Because they're really just focusing on what a great job they're doing. So we take it from reactive to proactive. OK. So back to our review process, your 30 day rollout plan in a really practical way, here's what you do. Week one is you're going to prepare and you're going to align. So write the purpose of your performance review system in two or three points. 
Finalise your one page template and your three manager prompts and you want to just create a quick reference guide for managers and a one page guide for employees that explains what to expect and how to prepare and as part of that pick your review months and then block the first cycle in the calendar. 
OK, week two, we need to train managers in this process and how to have these conversations. We want to run short training sessions on how to run an effective review. We want them to be focusing on listening, asking better questions, giving feedback and setting goals that are clear and measurable. And you may need to give them a script for the 1st 2 minutes of the meeting so they know how. 
To start off, so they know that they need to start off with that purpose and ask open Questions Week 3. Depending on the size of your business, you may want to pilot this with one or two teams. So choose a willing manager, a small team. Ask them to use the template. 
And just collect the feedback on what worked and what felt clunky, and then you can just adjust the templates we want to keep the structure light though, and Week 4 this is where we can hopefully go live. So roll out to the rest of the business, share the purpose of the system, the template, the calendar, remind managers. Put the time in their. 
Calendars now offer short coaching slots to managers who need help preparing and set a date to review in six weeks and then check we know, what do we need to keep, what we need to change a little bit, what do we need to stop? 
So in terms of how to run these conversations, and you'll find more about this in the companion article for this episode, the links in the show notes. First, you want to open with the purpose of the reviews and then give some appreciation and recognition. So yeah, we want to let them know the two or three things that we valued. 
Their contribution and we want to invite the employee to provide their input, so this is where we need to be asking open questions and listening. So asking what they're most proud of asking follow up questions. You know what? How did that work so well? What did you learn? 
And then we want to explore challenges and blockers. So we're going to ask you what's been the most challenging, what's getting in your way and listen for things that you can fix and separate behaviour feedback from resourcing issues. Then we want to share our perspective. So give a balanced view. Here's what I see going well here at one or two things that may need to change. 
Change using specific examples and focus on behaviour and impact and agree what good looks like. Then we're setting our goals for the next period. No more than five, hopefully only three. Tie them to your business priorities and for each goal ask how we're going to track it and what support do you need. 
Then moving into development and career, what skills or experience do you want to develop next and think about a mix of learning? It's not just about training courses. It could be a project shadowing a mentor, a stretch task if the person is exploring a career move, be honest about what that looks like in your business. 
And then we want to close with clarity and confidence. So summarising the agreed goals, the support, the next step and ask what feels most helpful from me between now and our next check in. So that's it. Keep it clear, simple, genuine and this is what keeps the system alive. 
In terms of performance improvements, they don't happen in these regular meetings. They happen in the work week by week. So if you want to keep momentum, you also need to have short check ins So you may have monthly or fortnightly one on ones from 15 to 30 minutes focused on progress and roadblock. 
You know you want to use those quarterly and annual reviews to summarise, not necessarily start from scratch every quarter and then when you're reviewing the process once a year, then you're just asking everyone you know are you having these conversations each quarter? Are you clear on expectations? Are we making fair decisions on? 
And promotion because that will help you to adjust and if you plan to link your reviews to salary decisions, then set up a clear salary review approach that sits alongside the performance conversation. But we want to keep the review itself focused on development and clarity and not just pay because. 
People will speak more openly when they trust what the purpose is and that it's not just all about my next salary increase. 
So thinking about how do we know this is working? You know, we don't need a huge dashboard, just a few signals will tell you if it's working. Firstly, most easy one is the completion rate of how many people are actually doing these quality conversations. Secondly, the percentage of roles that have those three to five clear goals. 
They're the employee confidence that they're receiving useful feedback, and you can get that through your engagement survey through a pulse check. Voluntary turnover in key roles, plus time to fill those roles, and perhaps even the ratio of internal moves or promotion to external hires. 
And then share these numbers in your leadership meetings, you know, celebrate the managers who build strong coaching rhythms and support those who need help. Now a few traps that I see most often. Firstly, I've talked about these templates are too long, don't have a long form. The long form becomes the meeting people will type and they'll. 
They won't talk, so keep the template short so it's about the conversation. Secondly, goals. We need to have goals that have measures. If a goal is vague, there's no accountability. We have really little alignment, so each goal needs to be clear and measurable. 
Make sure our one on ones aren't just turning into status updates, so if they're drifting into tasks is pull them back to progress against goals, roadblocks, development. 
Another one is late feedback, so if feedback is delayed, it's unhelpful, so don't wait for the quarterly meeting to give feedback, so quarterly meetings should be about the patterns. It shouldn't be a surprise you should never walk into a quarterly meeting and be surprised. 
Lack of consistency and this could be tricky as each manager will have a different style and approach even with an identical framework or system. So the way to check consistency is to review some of the completed forms that have a short session with your leaders where you discuss the patterns together because this can help build fairness and reduce bias. 
Your system is only as strong as the conversations inside it, so you have to invest in your managers and you want to invest in their ability to listen. With curiosity, how do they open with open questions? How do they listen? How do they wait to hear what someone's saying? How do they ask those right questions? 
Secondly, we need to make sure they understand how to give balanced feedback. How do they describe the behaviour and the impact? How do they be specific? How do they offer a clear next step? Check understanding third is goal setting, so our managers need to know how to goal set, how to actually have. 
Measurements that matter and how to align that to the business. So having a 90 minute manager workshop that covers those three areas will lift performance more than any new form ever will. So a quick example to bring this to life. Let's say you're running a growing. 
Services business Dima leads a small service desk team in March. You run your quarterly reviews. Dima meets with Joel, who's a technician who's been with you for nine months. Joel says that he's really proud of lifting his first call resolution on one client, and he wants to develop deeper networking skills, and he also shares. 
Blocker documentation is inconsistent, which slows him down. Dima acknowledges the wins with specifics gives one piece of feedback about response tone that may need to change, and together they set three goals for the next quarter. They talk about how to maintain that first call resolution. Maybe he needs to lead a mini project to standardise documents. Maybe it needs to complete a short networking course and Dima agrees to remove those blockers that he's mentioned as well, and then they book fortnightly check-insto stay on track so the conversation is positive. It's focused and clear. 
But that's the system working. 
OK, so one thing that can come up in terms of frequently asked questions. You know, do we need manager employee guides? I I don't know how you can do a system without it. So for managers just one page it just needs to cover the purpose, the meeting for the do's and don'ts, the checklist that they can use before, during and after the conversation. 
For employees, that's one page. What's the purpose of the reviews? How do you prepare? What should you expect? And again, remind them it's future focus. It's a career conversation. It's about goals. Second question, do we need software not to start? You know, if you have a clear template and a shared calendar that will get you 90% of. 
The way add software later if it saves time. 
3rd FAQ what if a manager avoids tough feedback? Or we need to coach that manager? Maybe you need to offer to sit in with them on the first time you know. Let them see the language that they need to use. Give them standard sentences and open questions that they can use. Because balanced feedback is a skill and it gets better with practise. 
What if an employee disagrees with the views of their performance? Well, this is where we invite their evidence and examples, but also it could be a clarity issue. So let's clarify expectations and measures. Let's set a short review period with clear goals and support. 
Document our agreements. Keep the conversation going. You know a big one with performance reviews. How do we avoid bias? This is why we do that consistency check and we want to share the findings with the leadership team at least twice a year to have a look at those patterns. You know, question the outliers. 
But also look for consistency across similar roles. And we also want to make sure that we're using more than one data point when they're making pay or promotion decisions. 
OK, so now you have your first performance review system that works for a growing team. You're going to have a short purpose that keeps everyone focused on growth, a clear rhythm of quarterly conversations, and an annual wrap up a conversation first template that stays to one to two pages. 
A light link to performance and potential for talent decisions. A simple 30 day roll out manager training that builds listening feedback and goal setting and you're going to have a few metrics that show up. It's working and if you do this performance becomes something that you just. 
Do in the business. It's not something that you dread once a year. So back to our original question. Are you managing or are you just hoping because managing looks like clear goals, regular coaching, consistent decisions and fewer surprises? 
Hoping looks like last minute forms, tick and flick exercises, crossing our fingers and you get to choose the culture that you create this year and if you'd like help to put this in place for your business, we would love to support you at amplify. HR just book a free discovery call. The link is in the show notes. 
If this episode was useful, please follow the show, share it with a fellow business owner or manager who is building their team this year, and you can also show us the love by leaving a rating or a review over Apple Podcasts or Spotify episodes released on Mondays. So click subscribe and you'll be notified of when it's available. Thank you so much. 
For joining me, if you have any feedback, questions or ideas for future episodes, head on over to amplifyhr.com.au or connect with me on LinkedIn and we can start a conversation.