Performance Management Shouldn’t Kill Collaboration

by Heidi K. Gardner and Ivan Matviak

LEADERS AT TECHCO, a fast-growing maker of marketing analytics software (a real firm we’ve disguised for this article), faced a puzzling problem: Though the sales and installation teams were hitting all their targets, many new customers were seriously dissatisfied. Digging in, the executives discovered that while each department was measuring its teams’ performance at their respective tasks, no one had any incentive to ensure that all the pieces fit together—that the software was customized to generate accurate analytics for each customer’s complex, nuanced requirements and went live on time. As a result, customers were complaining loudly.

TechCo urgently ...

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