After defining the process from transformation of Strategy to team goals, defining the customers, formulizing the KPI and setting the Target, establishing the monitoring of activity development, it is time to set the control and action planning system. Despite the tendency from some managers, to have reactive way of control and corrective action plans, it is suggested to have structure form of reviewing the development of business processes through Performance Review Meetings.

What is the Performance Review Meeting? The Performance Review Meeting is planned meeting of unit leader with his subordinates, during which he review the results for every KPI in the past period, and plan necessary activities for the next period. During this Performance Review measuring sheets are used, prepared and updated prior the meeting. For those KPIs that are below the expected performance, immediate steps should be taken.

Firstly, in order to recognize the real reason of underperformance, the process start with the Root Cause Analysis ( or Fishbone Diagram ). Based on this analysis, the Action Plan is made in order to improve the situation. Both Route Cause Analysis and Action Plan should be prepared before the start of the meeting by the owner of KPI.

Secondly, the unit leader review indicators of his subordinates one by one, and he is analyzing Action Plans that are prepared by his team members. Only then he make suggestions and correction in direction of Action Plan execution. It is crucially important that the pre-work is done by team member, and that unit leader who runs the Review Meeting only lead the meeting and guide and coach on corrective action plans. Of course it takes time, effort and a lot of coaching to build a competent team that will be ready to be self-judgmental and analytical enough to be prepared for performance review meeting.

What if the team or some member is not that ready for performance review? In that case the unit leader and chairman of performance review takes more directive role, issuing the clear instructions and giving all supportive information to his team members, in order to help the to understand the whole process.  

Of course, building the team takes a lot of time and effort and is a part of continuous process improvement that should be an active management initiative.

It is necessary to distinguish performance review meeting from other meetings, in order to give them more importance. Therefore you should establish the clear rules of Performnace Review meeting such as:

- The Performance review always starts at planned time ( e.g. Every Monday at 9:00 )
- Mobile phones off
- Review Sheets and Corrective Actions are prepared before the meeting
- All participants are prepared for Performance Review, they know what is behind the numbers.
- Only one person speaks at the time.
- The Performance review last as per pre-defined duration time ( e.g. 30 minutes )
- We respect the sequence of the meeting, by team members, by KPI, by review Actual vs. Target, by review of Corrective Action Plan, etc.
- Any other meaningful rule that will help the meeting efficiency.
 

It is wise to print rules of the Performance Review Meeting and to put them on the wall as and reminder of core rules.

The Best Practice says that it is good to have Blueprint of your company's performance review meetings scheme. This chart should be distributed to all functions, so that leaders of different units can plan to participate to his colleague's Performance Review, to observe the process, but also to participate. This is the way how Performance Review Meetings are improving the cross-functional communication.