Each CTO has limited power and does not necessarily have 100 percent decision-making power, so sometimes it will be influenced by the CEO and sometimes it will fail. The author hopes that through this sharing, can bring you some inspiration.

Jilei Huang, member of Beijing Branch of TGO Kunpeng Club, co-founder and CTO of Dewei Display

Hello everyone, I am Huang Jilei, co-founder and CTO of Dewei Display. Today, I would like to share with you the “Formula” of R&D Performance Management from the perspective of TRADITIONAL Chinese medicine. Share management methods from the perspective of TRADITIONAL Chinese medicine, but this formula is not OTC formula, may not be suitable for everyone, according to their own constitution adjustment.

Performance management is a “formula”, but also a process, in the words of Traditional Chinese medicine is “pain is impassable, general rule is not pain”. What I want to share with you today is a philosophy developed from four parts (four medicine) : performance planning, performance coaching, performance interview and motivation.

“General principles do not hurt”, first explain the reason. In order to make performance planning for team members, I drew a strategic planning map, with corporate mission, corporate vision and values on the roof. Next comes the strategic goals, which are divided into three categories: old products, new products and solutions. In addition, the CTO is also responsible for discussing the future positioning of the company with the boss and formulating strategic goals together.

The four lower levels — finance, customers, internal processes and learning and growth — also correspond to the balanced scorecard. Don’t just aim for short-term success. Among them, the process is very critical, which is the link of effective team coordination. I think the sustainable development of the enterprise focuses on the bottom.

The value of an enterprise must be the pursuit of reasonable interests, so that customers identify and improve the income of new products. Putting employees of the same position together is a department, and putting employees of different positions together is a team. In addition to the capacity of the personnel, there are many coordination problems. The difficulty here is to effectively mobilize everyone’s enthusiasm for learning, because only continuous learning, in order to improve their quality in all aspects.

In order to product direction, research and development is mainly divided into six aspects:

  1. Research/technology development. There are few opportunities right now, but there is also a small amount of demand;

  2. Application development. Optimizing known existing applications;

  3. Product development. Batch copy on the product line;

  4. Project development. One-off customization to B project, etc.

  5. Solutions. Provide a complete set of solutions;

  6. Service. Service charge.

The figure above is a relatively balanced matrix architecture. Functional departments should contribute core technologies, key technologies, standards, architectures, shared modules, components, etc. In addition, a series of process specifications and templates need to be built to avoid solving low-level problems. The most important thing for a project is to quickly produce low-cost products while contributing products such as module sharing, defect libraries, use case libraries, and so on. Finally, some intellectual property including patent and soft software should be exported together.

But that’s not enough. We have to keep training. To optimize team building, improve quality management and enthusiasm. From the perspective of the company, if there is no human resources, especially the CEO does not have a strategic thought, the whole incentive only research and development can not be established. Therefore, there must be superior support, or they can only do a small auxiliary incentive alone, although it can improve the incentive system, but not much effect. Without senior human resources, many things can not be done well.

As for the award and penalty baseline, each enterprise is different, I personally understand that punishment is needed, but also to have their own bottom line. However, any penalty should be rewarded. For employees whose results exceed expectations and have special contributions, the reward should be rewarded.

Performance decomposition should be decomposed from company planning and business plan. For example, our economic plan is to increase profit margins from 20 percent to 22 percent. That’s the business goal. Of course, the performance of a department can be iterative and adjusted according to quarterly changes.

For job performance, most companies still need both qualitative and quantitative, and can not violate the bottom line. As a manager, in addition to team building, we also need to ensure the improvement of employees’ abilities. In addition, whether the improvement of team members’ ability is linked to performance also needs to be communicated with CTO in advance. In the long run, each team member is focused on learning and growing, constantly improving, not sprinting.

In addition, we can also make appropriate strategic subsidies:

  1. For risky RESEARCH and development (future incremental, suitable for expert);

  2. Not strictly according to the key performance indicators assessment, focus on the key nodes and methods, ideas;

  3. Strategically subsidize performance pay or bonuses in incentives.

This level is mainly about communication, “general rules don’t hurt”, so you need to talk to employees. We can achieve performance cooperation with team members and set performance goals together with employees. The realization of goals is strongly related to the responsibilities of the post. Tell them what to do, where the value is and how it relates to the goals of the organization.

At the same time, as Ctos, we have to balance the team and try to avoid eating too much and being heroic. A team manager is a cohesive force that needs to achieve the team’s goals more through others than through himself.

After that, what we do is performance tracking. We must get used to walking around and communicating with team members to avoid team weaknesses. Second, we need to pay attention to strategic customers and key projects, but not all work should be concerned with, timely understand the progress of employees, to help them remove work obstacles, to provide them with some necessary help.

If you do everything right, your performance review will no longer be a pain point. So the assessment is really 2 points:

  1. In the process of performance tracking, record performance as far as possible, including key events (especially outstanding and abnormal errors), and have specific basis for assessment;

  2. Timely feedback in the performance tracking process, both sides have the same view in the assessment, and there is no “accident”.

Performance interview is also a very important point of performance management. Whether you choose to chat with employees over drinks or small talk, you still need to have a formal interview in the end.

The picture above is some of the preparation we need to do, instead of going straight to the point, thinking about what we need to communicate beforehand, the purpose of communication, etc. After all, everyone has a different point of view, and employees will also have their own cognition. If it is not a matter of principle, we can put forward it as a suggestion, and finally reach a consensus and summary.

The diagnosis of performance interview is divided into four dimensions: knowledge, skills, attitude and external state. In face-to-face talks, the most important thing is equality, respect, listening and understanding, just like the service of Haidilao, which respects employees very much and does not scold subordinates in front of them.

So when we interview, we must be equal, do not compare with other employees. Most importantly, we need to look to the future together, not the past, and help our employees build confidence together. As a manager, the most important thing is team performance.

In terms of performance incentives, you can follow the 9 aspects of the diagram above. At the bottom is the foundation, to ensure that the vision and culture of the company is attractive, even if the small team has its own style and influence. Then there are six aspects, you can choose to set according to your own enterprise.

So motivation is more important is to play our imagination, to let the boss identify with science. At the same time, the material base determines the superstructure, so we must have material security to finally mobilize everyone.

Do you personally evaluate each employee’s performance? Do you need layering?

There are about 200 people in our company and more than 60 in our R&D department. It is impossible for me to do performance performance for everyone. When it comes to performance, I measure in layers. B: In every department, and other employees have direct supervisors.

If not the founder, how should the system you just mentioned be promoted? What if it fails? How to get people to accept it?

I was one of the founders, but I didn’t have the decision-making power a lot of the time. I’ve always believed that HR should be strong, but our CEO doesn’t. Therefore, our HR is relatively weak at this point. In the company, first of all, you need to see how much power you have. If you can put forward more plans and clearly state the advantages and disadvantages, then the CEO may listen to you. So I think the CEO is not impossible to change. But if you can’t change your employees as a technology leader, you can’t change your boss either. But we should not give up, and should always strive to achieve the goal.

– End –

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Do you find the “recipe” mentioned in this article has helped you? What do you think of “performance management”?

As a technical leader of an enterprise, he needs to face far more than technical problems, and there may be many other puzzles. How can he cultivate his leadership in the team and build an excellent and efficient technical team? From AI to blockchain, how should we, as corporate decision makers, be rational when the wave of technology hits? How to help the CEO solve problems from a business perspective? . In June 2018, the third GTLC Global Leadership Summit kicked off with 500+ Ctos on site to share with you what you need to know about technology management.