The Mansis Performance Management System

Background
Benefits
Features Overview
Who Uses the Mansis Performance Management System

1. Background

The Mansis Performance Management System (which is commonly just called "The Mansis System") can be used by any organization to organize and manage its people. With this powerful tool, you can eliminate the guesswork about what's expected from people and how they are performing. Management will have effective tools to reward and coach employees to high levels of performance. Use The Mansis System to make sure your organization is progressing according to plan.

Developed from two decades of field research, The Mansis System is made up of processes, interpersonal procedures, supplementary tools, as well as specially designed forms for helping all members of your organization clarify performance expectations, resolve and prevent performance problems, successfully perform their day-to-day duties, and maintain a proper data base of employee performance.

The Mansis System gives any organization a leading-edge, contemporary process for ensuring quality performance and accountability.

More significantly, The Mansis System can be a powerful instrument of change, involving all members of your organization in defining and creating its future, while at the same time providing an effective process for balancing the inherent tensions between empowerment and personal accountability, between top-down direction and creativity, and between personal freedom and achieving organizational goals.

The Mansis System has been judged to be "simply the best comprehensive general management system I have ever seen. It has been put together in a simple way and it works. All the pieces fit together and you get results."

2. Benefits

Performance Improvements

Performance of employees improves when The Mansis System is used, while stress, anxiety, procrastination, and wasted time and resources decrease, because:

direction is clearer and consistent,
people know what they're supposed to do,
communication about performance expectations and results is more timely and accessible,
individual performance recognition is ensured,
everyone is in tune with the direction of the organization,
problems are prevented or resolved constructively,
the organization can learn and continuously improve,
everyone is held accountable for personal performance, and
all employees have effective tools for improving their own performance.

Tool for Implementing Change

The Mansis System supplies the critical core processes which must be in place for any organization to implement change successfully. With The Mansis System you can monitor individual and group progress in a change initiative, coach organizational members to resolve the problems which accompany change, ensure accountability for change responsibilities and review / document the resulting progress.

The Mansis System can be an organization's platform for implementing any new initiative including: continuous learning and continuous improvement, leadership training, coaching, empowerment, team-based decision making, re-engineering, ISO 9000, TQM, Lean Organization, Service Excellence and strategic plans. This may sound incredible, but you'll see how the System becomes an organization's central processor to translate any intention into reality.

Empowered Workforce

The use of The Mansis System creates an empowered workforce because:

everyone can take charge of his/her own training and performance,
direction is more relevant and personal,
the organization's and the employees' belief or value systems can become more explicit and motivating,
employees take more ownership of their own performance results and record.

With The Mansis System the relevant details of job direction can be directly accessible to any employee, and not filtered through levels of bureaucracy or obstructed through interpersonal communication breakdowns. Employees are empowered by their access to the information they need to be successful.

Consistent Management Practices

The Mansis System makes the way people are managed systematic (and therefore more predictable and consistent) and less dependent upon the goodwill or capabilities of individual managers. The procedures, techniques and the fundamental way people are led and managed become tangible and consistent, i.e. a system which can be taught, monitored and continuously improved. Managers may come and go, but the system remains as an organizational asset and a competitive advantage.

The Mansis System systematizes what's too important to be left to chance, i.e. the direction and information employees receive; how well employees perform; their performance history, and; how employees interact and service clients.

Equitable Treatment of Employees

Because "the way people are managed" is systematic and consistent (and enforceable), a genuine sense of equity increases in the organization. This commonly leads to: improved motivation; decreases in grievances; increased productivity; consistent and constructive discipline, and; lower incidents of wrongful dismissal.

Easier Performance Appraisals

There's no more procrastination to do employee performance appraisals (called performance reviews in The Mansis System). The review process measures both performance results (what has been accomplished) and behavior (how the job was done). Performance Reviews become easier, more valid, more meaningful and timely. Performance reviews are no longer unwanted surprises.

Follow-Through and Accountability

The processes in The Mansis System dramatically improve the likelihood that assignments get completed, and that goals and deadlines are met. Clarity in direction, fair treatment and recognition for personal achievement enhance a sense of accountability. This in turn: reduces stress and frustration; increases morale; saves time and money, and; helps ensure organizational progress, i.e. no more lost momentum.

Coaching and Discipline Routines

Integrated into The Mansis System are interpersonal skills for coaching others using a proven process to resolve any performance problem in a constructive, proactive way and to develop the required documentation to support any necessary management action including official discipline.

As a result, properly used, The Mansis System can reduce the fear of wrongful dismissal; save considerable time and money; ensure equitable treatment of all, and; encourage proactive resolution of problems rather than procrastination and tolerance of incompetence.

Reduce Costs

The Mansis System can eliminate the staggering cost of unclear, incomplete, inconsistent or contradictory communication and dramatically reduce the time and expense of employee training.

Improved Selection Decisions

The Mansis System helps you to improve employee selection decisions with clearer, more specific job performance criteria and behavioral-based performance histories.

Gets You Organized

Most fundamentally, The Mansis System provides you with the framework for bringing order and organization to your business. It helps you get your organization -- everyone, moving together, in the same direction.

Eliminates Isolation of Management

The Mansis System lets senior management stay in close touch with how the front-line employees are being coached and managed, and how their problems and concerns are being resolved with their supervisors. Critical bottom-up communication keeps the management finger on the pulse of the organization.

Consistent Service Quality

Whatever industry we're in, we all provide some sort of service to our customer or client; and the quality of that service is always determined by the performance of people. If we are to have any control over that "service" we must be able to manage the performance of people. Since the key to quality is consistency, how can we produce consistent quality with an unpredictable resource, i.e. people? The answer is to systematize the management of people, because systems can be predictable.

Critical Resource, A Competitive Advantage

In today's economy, the only competitive advantage an organization really has is the quality of its people and their performance. All the other resources such as technology, land, materials, etc., can be bought!

For many organizations the cost of the human resource can be as much as 80% of expenses. And for most organizations, these costs are one of the last areas for significant productivity improvement. We can't leave the management of this critical resource to chance. In particular, depending on the specifics of your balance sheet, for every 1% increase in people productivity, there can be a corresponding increase in profits of 10% to 20% and more! Imagine, then, the financial impact of improving the effectiveness and productivity of your workforce through The Mansis System's more systematic performance management. As a least case scenario, what would an increase in productivity of only 1% mean to your organization?

Pace of Change

The pace of change is accelerating everywhere: in society, in industry and government, and within organizations. Gone are the days when we could simply hire good people, leave them alone and expect that the job would get done. Organizational life has become too complex for that, and the stakes are too high. If organizations aren't properly organized to lead and manage the performance of their members, they will never survive the pace of change.

3. Features Overview

Performance Direction

Clarify and communicate your organization's structure and reporting relationships.
Clarify roles through documenting and sharing mutual expectations with others including peers, employees, supervisors, customers and suppliers.
Ensure that all employees and their supervisors have the same understanding of job direction details. No "dropping hints."
Everyone has immediate access to all policies, procedures, performance measures and standards relevant to his/her job.
Employees are less dependent on others for learning the details of performance expectations, policies and procedures, etc.; more self-directed learning.
Clarify and successfully implement important organizational themes or focuses such as improved teamwork, cooperation or quality service.

Employee Coaching

Conduct coaching meetings with employees assisted by a practical coaching guideline which helps you to enhance employee self-esteem, improve your confidence to resolve employee performance problems and implement a successful action plan.
Track your coaching activity and the results you achieve with all employees.
Give meaningful, documented performance recognition to your employees.
Document and track employee development activities initiated by either the employee or his/her supervisor.
If required, administer well-documented official discipline such as a written warning, while maintaining the dignity and self-esteem of employees.
Support the uncomfortable decision to dismiss an employee with a thorough, factual, performance database.

Performance Feedback and Review

Receive regularly scheduled performance feedback from all your direct employees.
Identify and resolve your direct employees' concerns, problems and ideas for improvement.
Receive timely feedback about the performance, concerns and needs of lower-level employees, and the subsequent supervisory follow-up.
Meet regularly with one's supervisor to reaffirm personal performance achievement and to communicate and resolve concerns or suggestions for improvement.
All members of the organization are held accountable for personal performance.
Conduct a "no surprise" developmental-oriented employee performance review, with significant employee input, supported by a substantial, valid database.

4. Who Uses the Mansis Performance Management System

There are many compelling reasons why anyone in management would want to learn and use the common sense processes of The Mansis System. The benefits are significant. Above all, the System can give a common language and processes to an organization so that more time can be spent determining what the future should be and less time spent wondering how to make it happen.

Large Organization

Large organizations typically use or get involved in a multitude of "people management" programs and initiatives such as team building, leadership training, TQM, mission statements, performance appraisal, employee empowerment, suggestion systems, competency-based training, employee coaching, continuous improvement, constructive discipline, reengineering and more.. More often these "bits and pieces" are not well coordinated, and risk becoming "flavours of the month," short-lived and suboptimal. The Mansis System integrates most of the critical people management concepts that all organizations need into one simple-to-learn-and-use system.

In large organizations (and fast growing small organizations as well) executives too easily get isolated from the "front lines" and they can lose touch with how the business is really being run, i.e. how well is the management function being managed? As the senior executive, are you fully aware of what your work force is doing? Are you aware of how well your employees are being trained, managed and coached by the rest of management? The Mansis System gives you the tools and a process to manage your managers.

Small Business

One of the secrets of success for a small business is to systematize as much as possible, for consistency. Until the owner-operator gets his or her operation systematized, the business is typically running the owner, rather than the other way round. The Mansis System gives the owner/operator a simple but powerful tool to systematize the businesses processes, and to ensure that they are followed.

Inefficiencies or unclear processes, which a large bureaucracy might be able to survive or "muddle through," can quickly destroy a small business. One or two ineffective or misdirected employees can ruin the operation or destroy customer relations. The Mansis System gives the owner/operator the tools to ensure that the business has its act together and that everyone performs successfully.

Franchise: Multi-Unit Operation

The secret of franchising is to develop the magic recipe (how the product or service is made) and bottle it. Then you sell the magic recipe to the franchisees who must follow this recipe for success.

But the recipe for success must also contain how customers and employees are treated, i.e. the external and internal quality of service. The Mansis System gives you the tools to clarify, communicate, audit and control the quality of service your organization must have for success.

Sales Organization

In any sales organization, it is critically important to manage sales activity and the sales process; and especially to manage sales/customer interactions. Processes must also be in place to hold the sales force accountable for sales and service quality. These must become strengths of a sales organization and The Mansis System is the ideal solution.

Not-For-Profit Organization

Even in not-for-profit organizations there is a strong need to clearly define and communicate what we mean by "service" and to make it happen consistently. And the most successful not-for-profits have found that managing volunteers (non-salaried employees) is much the same as managing salaried employees.

Management Consultant

The Mansis System contains the key tools that any organization needs to manage performance and implement change. As a result, The Mansis System can be a framework for diagnosis -- a very effective model to identify deficiencies in a client's human resource management process (gap analysis) and for prescribing remedies.

Also, the credibility of a management consultant is directly effected by a client's successful or unsuccessful implementation of the consultant's recommendations. With The Mansis System, a consultant can better prepare a client to implement the recommendations and enhance the consultant's reputation.