The CEO Who Initiated a Dialogue Rather than an Instruction
The organisation had asked for performance management. At least that is what everyone believed.
The mandate sounded straightforward.
Improve performance. Increase profitability. Strengthen accountability. Introduce structure. Measure outcomes.
The objectives were sensible. The implementation began.
Managers learned. Reports improved. Discussions became more disciplined.
Departments became increasingly aligned. People started asking better questions.
At first, the questions were operational. Then commercial. Then strategic.
Then something unexpected happened. The questions started travelling upwards.
Department Heads wanted clarity. The General Managers wanted clarity. The senior leadership team wanted clarity. Eventually, the same questions began appearing repeatedly.
What are our objectives? What assumptions are they based upon? What are we trying to become? What are we optimising for?
The questions were not rebellious. They were logical. The organisation was learning.
And learning organisations tend to become curious.
When budgeting time arrived, the CEO was asking the organisation to improve profitability.
A reasonable request in any organisation.
The response from the management team was equally reasonable:
- What is our Highest and Best Use?
- What market positioning are we pursuing?
- Which customer are we targeting?
- What brand strategy supports that choice?
- How much capital are we prepared to invest?
- When will that investment occur?
- What return are we expecting?
- What organisational structure is required to deliver it?
The fascinating part was that nobody had instructed the organisation to ask these questions. The organisation had taught itself.
Performance management had created curiosity.
And curiosity has a remarkable quality. Once it takes hold, it becomes difficult to reverse.
There was no hostility in these questions. No resistance. No politics.
Simply a request for clarity in order to plan and execute effectively.
What followed was a growing realisation that important assumptions about who the organisation was, where it wanted to go, and what it ultimately wanted to become had never been fully articulated.
Eventually, the discussion returned to management itself: Tell us what you believe we can achieve. Tell us what you need to achieve it.
What had started as a project about measurement gradually became a conversation about direction.
Looking back, I believe this was the real success of the project.
Not the reports. Not the systems. Not the numbers.
The organisation had learned how to think and had begun discovering what it was and what it wanted to achieve.
Reflection
This article is about how curiosity transforms performance management into organisational learning.
This is the twelfth of a series of articles – “What hospitality taught me about myself” – in which I share lessons learned throughout my professional and personal journey, and how those experiences have shaped my thinking and led me to develop my own principles.
Many people believe performance management is about measurement.
I have gradually come to a different conclusion.
Performance management is fundamentally about setting expectations.
Measurement simply reveals whether those expectations have been achieved.
The difficult part is rarely the measurement.
The difficult part is defining the expectations first.
Governance begins with that clarity, because expectations define decision rights, accountability, information flows, and ultimately the basis upon which performance can be assessed.
And not merely the financial expectations.
Once people understand how a business works, they naturally begin asking why it works the way it does.
What started as a discussion about performance eventually became a discussion about purpose, positioning, capital, structure, and strategy.
Looking back, that was the real achievement.
The organisation had not merely learned how to measure performance.
It had learned how to think.
About the Author
Raoul Gransier is a Senior International Adviser and owner-focused hotelier with more than 25 years of operational and advisory experience in hospitality, tourism, governance, and performance improvement.
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