Shouldn't we measure the mid-career professionals differently

The IT Companies are struggling to handle the mid career professionals.  These folks are considered as organizational fat that needs to be reduced and so are in the line of fire.

 

In this post, I want to go through an approach which could help the organizations look differently at professionals who are in mid-career stage.

 

To start the discussion, let us understand what an organization's workforce is meant to do. The workforce is supposed to  do 2 things primarily

 

1. Make Strategy
2. Execute the strategy

 

The top management makes the strategy and the workforce at the lower levels are busy in executing it.

 

The performance evaluation of the employees is done based on this.

 

The top management is generally evaluated based on revenue targets. The lower level is evaluated on the basis of the amount of work done and the quality of the work done.

 

The so called mid management (People who are not developers but are not in strategy making either) is doing a critical role.  And it of ensuring that the strategy is executed well. We could call it as monitoring execution and managing efficiency.

Monitoring execution and Managing Efficiency

 

But this is often overlooked and under estimated. And the reason is the intangible nature of the outcome of the role.

 

If a project is completed on time and within budget, how can you quantify the effort of the project manager in the success of the project? You can say the Developers did a good job by looking at the low defects and the number of hours used to complete the work.

When the project starts making money, the management strategy will prove to be right. What about the project manager?

 

Traditionally, the mid management folks are evaluated based on targets and/or based on work done. And this is where the clarity of their impact is lost.

 

They are being measured using either the strategy parameters or the execution parameters.

 

A new approach to look at mid-career professionals

To understand the significance of the mid-management in the organization, there is a need to create a specific evaluation criteria

1. for measuring efficiency and
2. to measure monitoring of execution.

 

This approach will help the organization quantify the impact of good project management, delivery management in the top-line and bottom-line.

And over a period of time, a bench mark can be set to quantify the meaning of good project management/delivery management.

 

The point is to create a structure such that the monitoring and managing skills which are intangible in nature are measured and quantified.

 

Pointers for evaluation criteria

To start with, a simple solution is to create a scale from 1 to 5 and measure the efforts of the Project managers on at least the following 3 variables. The Variables can be broken down further based on the Project needs and the Organizations needs.

 

1. How efficiently were the resources utilized,
2. How promptly were the stakeholders updated and thus escalations were avoided.
3. What are the pro-active actions take to control budget over run and ensure timely completion of tasks

 

Of course, this is not an excuse to cover up the reskilling/upskilling needs for folks in mid-career stage. The approach proposed in this post should be used to measure the impact of the project managers on the Project success.

Reskilling/Upskilling is the need of the hour. We cannot escape from it and so nobody should try to escape from it.

 

 Do let me know if the proposed approach makes sense.

Happy to take the discussion further based on your comments, views and feedback

Featured Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay