As a scientist and believer of the good in all human beings, one can probably guess that I am not interested in politics. For one, it is manipulative and two, shameless. However, I do like to stay informed, so I stay tuned. In a much-anticipated speech to the Republican convention, Ann Romney set out to show voters a more personal side of her husband, Mitt Romney. But at the top of her remarks, she indicated that “this man will not fail”. As a corporate and Industrial psychologist, bipartisan, this statement was certainly a fallacy.
In organizational development (OD), performance can be thought of as Actual Results vs Desired Results. Any discrepancy, where Actual is less than Desired, could constitute the performance improvement zone. Performance management and improvement can be thought of as a cycle:
- Performance planning where goals and objectives are established
- Performance coaching where a manager intervenes to give feedback and adjust performance
- Performance appraisal where individual performance is formally documented and feedback delivered
A performance problem is any gap between Desired Results and Actual Results. Performance improvement is any effort targeted at closing the gap between Actual Results and Desired Results.
In her speech, Ann Romney was making a performance guarantee.
A performance guarantee is a promise made that either a service lives up to certain expectations, or that a service or product will continue to perform well over a stated time period. In the business world, there are many such guarantees: each created in individual ways, defining commitment and extent of future responsibility. In more complex ways, sometimes third parties guarantee performance of something too, especially when employing subcontractors.
For consumers, the performance guarantee might sound something like the following: “We guarantee if you use our exterminator service, you won’t have any more cockroaches or we’ll come back for free.” This is not just an assurance of quality in the initial service, but an assurance of quality in the near future. To save money, the exterminators would also specify a time period, or they might be guaranteeing free service forever, with each new roach encroachment. The goal, though, is to make the customer choose the services of a business because that business promises to stand by its work.
Is a performance guarantee something that can be made on a service, which is dependent on so many factors? Can we guarantee someone’s performance without real assurance of quality and consequential evidence?
Regardless of industry, public or private, service or product, anyone attracted by a performance guarantee always needs to look behind bold print or summations of the guarantee. In other words, reading the fine print is valuable to determine the strength of the guarantee and the true intent.
