How to manage your job performance

Employees are usually evaluated once a year (or once every six months), during the often dreaded process known as Annual Performance Review.

In today's global economy, that might not be often enough. However, it would be unrealistic to expects managers to find the time to evaluate employees on a monthly or weekly basis. After all, every boss has his/her own job to do.

This puts the burden of self-evaluation and self-improvement squarely on the shoulders of every employee.

The problem is, most employees have never been taught how to manage themselves or their own performance.

This self-management problem has been mentioned by the late Peter Drucker (the management guru) as a major challenge that most people will have to face.

To make matters worse, many job descriptions do not clearly describe the main task to be accomplished.

If you're a salesperson, evidently you have to sell. If you're a project manager, you have to make sure that projects get done on time and within budget. But there are many jobs (especially staff jobs) that do not have clear goals or metrics, such as Communications Director or Manager of Human Resources.

The success secret is to clearly identify three main elements:

• What is the main task to be done? (If you're a nurse, for example, the main task is to take care of patients -- not doing administrative work)
• How much of your time, every day, is spent doing specifically that task?
• How do you (and your boss) evaluate your performance?

I borrowed the above from Peter Drucker. These three little questions can do wonders in helping a person focus on what really matters in her job, thereby giving her a significant degree of control over her job and, by extension, over her career.