Profile – Gary Markle. Founder of Energage – consultancy firm.

There is a reason why we remember good teachers. There are not that many of them around.

Atlanta based Gary Markle has certainly mastered the technique of getting a reasonably complex message across while maintaining an ease of manner, a trick only the better pedagogues manage to master. 

Markle was in Dublin this month to speak to members of Vistage Ireland, along with a number of invited guests. He was here to spread the message that too many organisations are locked into forms of employee performance measurement which simply are not delivering from the point of view of management and workforce alike.

His address was entitled : ‘Catalytic coaching – A Performance System that Works.’

In his view, classic forms of performance evaluation known as performance management systems do not provide what it says on the tin. In essence, they involve a process of annual review which is a source of embarrassment to managers carrying out the review, and a source of resentment for those employees forced to subject themselves to review. Markle traces the origins of PMS to the US giant, Xerox. The spread of PMS has resulted in the generation of documentation and box ticking. He believes that HR departments value such documents as a means of providing their organisation with ‘cover’ in the event of subsequent dismissals of employees. The company lawyer will request HR to show him the performance evaluation.  However, in some cases, such evaluations can be used against the employer as when they suggest that the employee concerned ‘meets expectations.’

 Performance evaluations are also seen as being critical to the business of determining the level of extra reward, or bonus that an employee should command. However, it is Gary Markle’s view that such decisions are best kept away from administrators and communicated on a person to person basis, manager to immediate subordinate. This is particularly the case when -as is so often the case, these days – the cupboard is bare. Employees may well be working harder than ever, yet key business targets are not being achieved, due to events beyond everyone’s control. In such an environment, a system of bonus awards can indeed backfire, particularly if small numbers of staff, typically in sales, are seen to be given the largest slice, by far, of the pie. In Gary’s view, “it is best to separate conversations about pay and salary administration from conversations about performance.” Managers need to motivate those who work for them by letting them know that they are valued and will ( hopefully ) be rewarded, in better times to come. “Never stop talking to people in the difficult times. Let them know that you are aware that they are underpaid.” ( if that is the case ).

It is time to start evaluating one’s evaluation system, by asking the following questions : Does it impact on performance / change peoples’ behaviour? change peoples’ level of discretionary effort? Does it reduce the level of regretted resignations by employees?  “The best employees are those most likely to resign..” The best way to tackle the problem of law suits is by preventing them in the first place. “It is the feeling that one has not been treated fairly that drives lawsuits.”

Markle’s ‘Catalytic Coaching’ theory :

Gary traces his disillusion with conventional performance evaluation to a combination of personal experience and a meeting with Dr W. Edwards Deming, a management consultant who has been described as ‘The Father of the postwar Japanese industrial revival’. Deming lived until the age of 93, working almost to the end. As Gary sees it, the international recognition accorded to Deming was long overdue when it came in the 1980s. In his view, he played a lead role in fathering the modern quality movement. Deming was originally brought over by Japanese industrialists to help overhaul its organisations and shake up the country’s image as a producer of cheap, low quality goods in the 1950s. Based on his experience there, he came up with fourteen points for continuous improvement in organisations.

Among these were :

- more effective two way communication. “driving out fear.”

- institute training on the job.

- encourage education.

- break down the barriers between departments in organisations.

- eliminate arbitrary targets.

- permit pride of workmanship. this implied the abolition of annual merit rating.

- managers’ responsibilities to become more qualitative  with less emphasis on quantity.

As Gary recalls : “Deming highlighted the existence of seven deadly diseases which were spreading from the US to organisations elsewhere, one of which was performance evaluation.” Gary’s own life was shaped by large corporations. His father was a manager with Ford. “We moved constantly – we lived in five different cities when I was growing up. My father was a high level manager. They eventually hung him out to dry – they made his life so msierable that he quit.” Gary completed his education with an MA degree in Communications at Purdoe College in Indiana, the leading US school in its field. He joined the exploration company, Exxon, “the top country in the world, at the time.” He progressed through several senior positions in HR within the Company. “I quit the Company when they failed to talk to me about my career during a downturn. I’d had two promotions when Exxon hit the skids ( during the 1980s energy price slump ). They were not in a position to assure me that I had a future. I asked my boss and he said : “I don’t know what they will do with me..I figured out that these people did not really care about me.”

Gary began to put into effect the principles learned from Deming when he moved to work for Louisiana Energy. He developed a concept known as the Catalytic Coaching Implementation Process involving the use of relative simple colour coded forms.

It constitutes a “personal development plan for the employee” which starts with a full explanation to the staff of what will be involved and what it will do.  It involves every employed and for each individual starts with them setting out their views on one of the forms and which is then used for a meeting with their immediate boss where the key is “to listen, ask questions, take notes,” not to talk at the employee but to understand where they are coming from and respond. It is about training employees to be coachable and developing a realistic and firm action plan which can be monitored quarterly to deliver enhanced performance.  A series of meetings are to be held, all of which need to be carefully prepped

Gary and his colleagues at his consultancy, Energage, sit in and watch managers carrying out coaching sessions. Managers are encouraged to develop the art of coaching.  The HR manager’s role is to act as a “coach of coaches.”

He advises users of his system to avoid the instinct to tailor, by altering the coaching sheets, changing the questions which may change the focus for the employee.  Managers / coaches should avoid what he describes as ‘bullshit questions’ – he instances one such : “how are you living the Company values ? “  By the use of such questions, one is , in effect, “allowing people to tell others what they want to hear.”  it is critical that the information provided is respected and used only in the way it is intended.  “It is the relationship between you and your boss”… This is the employee’s story.”     

Concluding remarks :

Gary is pretty clear in his view that the current prevailing system of performance measurement is one that has been created by those who enjoy process and enjoy assembling and dealing with data. The system generates lots of income for consultancies.

The HR industry is benefiting from the complexity of the current system just as tax accountants benefit from a complex tax system.

“HR people like process. They are followers – 85% of them. They are implementation specialists. It is not their thing to be the Compass. If the boss says : ‘We are going South’, they make it so.”

Gary views himself more as iconoclast rather than as cynic.  His boundless energy is dedicated to delivering substantially improved performance as he has enabled so many companies to do already, on the basis of respecting and developing the people who are employed at whatever level, rather than administering so many forms per year to keep the file right and the lawyers at bay…

He draws an analogy between PMS reviews and those very expensive full body CAT scans.

“Our approach is to let employees talk, to tell their story..”

In spreading his message, Gary finds contact with Vistage members to be of particular use as it allows him to talk with CEOs, bypassing the usual channels.

“If you talk to the Head, the body will follow………..”