In This Issue

        

 

She grew up poor in the Bronx and was raised by her widowed mother. Sotomayor went on to obtain her law degree from Yale School of Law and worked as assistant District Attorney for the city of New York and even had her own private practice until becoming appointed a judge in 1991, her life long dream.

 

In 1997 she was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit by President Clinton where she ruled on cases involving civil rights, abortion, first, second and fourth amendment rights,etc. and in 2009, Sotomayor was nominated by President Obama to the U.S. Supreme Court as Associate Justice. Based on her early life alone, no one would ever predict that she'd eventually become a Supreme Court justice.  As if that's not inspiring enough, she's the first Latina to earn a place on the court. 

What we measure and how often is an indicator of how successful we will be, but measurement alone is not enough.  Sometimes we measure for the sake of measuring but in reality, an analysis of our measurements is necessary to unfold the picture of whether we are taking the right course of action or not. If the analysis reveals that the actions do not yield the desired outcomes we are searching for, it is time to shift our focus to the things that help to achieve the desired outcomes. After we have done that, we can come up with new ways to achieve the desired outcomes with regard to the things that are not working ...then we can measure those and start the process again.

 

Measurement and analysis are never ending and they never should be!

 

 

      Sincerely,

      Tracy D. Holloman and Kevin A. Key

       Managing Partners

If you have ever worked in a large corporation or medium to small business with more than 25 employees, you have probably had the benefit of an annual performance review. Now I could talk about the methods for reviewing performance, paper versus electronic and 360 versus manager/supervisor staff reviews, however, measuring performance is more about analysis and course correction.

 

 

We have all done it at one point in our careers where we have written a performance review for an employee just for the sake of getting it out of the way. We provide our evaluation, grade the employee on their performance and most often, we can't remember what happened all year long and, if the performance is not great, we put them on some type of plan of our choosing to correct the performance deficiency.  In most cases, it is difficult for you and difficult for the employee because the employee did not have the benefit of correcting the performance throughout the year.  The truth is, the performance review is an opportunity for you to rate performance over a period but you do not necessarily have to wait for the review at the 6-month or 1-year mark. If you are meeting with your employees often and setting goals, there really is not a need for you or the employee to agonize over the annual performance review because you are reviewing performance all of the time.   Read More

Developing people to do the work that you have hired them to do takes more than just a meeting with the boss and a point of the finger to what needs to be done. Like any learned skill, it takes practice and measurement of results. Often, we hire people based on a resume and interview, but we can go deeper. If people make the difference in your business, it would be behoove you to put a plan in place to develop your staff from the onset of employment so that you get the most from them. In other words, have a plan in place from the first day they step foot through the doors of your organization. Acclimation plans for new employees take into consideration the work to be performed, resources available to employees, on the job training, meeting other staff and meeting the boss.

 

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 Sincerely,

Purposeful Leadership Solutions