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Tips for Addressing a Performance Dip

Originally published September 28, 2018Guidance reviewed August 23, 20262 min current guide

SDI Clarity Insight. This article is part of our Knowledge Base, drawing on 20+ years of organizational design and talent development expertise. Browse our L&D Glossary for key terminology.

Current practitioner guide

Respond to a performance dip without treating every cause as capability.

Stabilize the evidence.

Confirm the baseline, timing, affected population, conditions, and consequence. Look for changes in demand, staffing, process, systems, measures, product, customer mix, leadership, and upstream inputs. Separate a short learning curve from a sustained decline, and verify that the metric still represents the performance leaders care about. Acting on an unstable or overly broad signal can create more disruption than the dip itself.

Diagnose with the people doing the work.

Combine operating data with observation and the perspective of performers, managers, customers, and adjacent teams. Test whether the barrier is knowledge, skill, confidence, access, authority, workload, tool design, incentives, handoffs, or conflicting priorities. Avoid using the conversation to assign blame. The goal is to understand the conditions producing the result and identify which owner can change them.

Use a proportionate response and review point.

Choose the smallest intervention matched to the evidence, define what should change, and name when the result will be reviewed. A process fix, job aid, system correction, workload decision, coaching conversation, or targeted practice may be more appropriate than a broad program. Monitor unintended consequences and equity across populations. If performance does not recover, reopen the causal model rather than increasing the same treatment.

Pressure-test this decision with Clara

Use the article as context, then describe the work, role, capability, or adoption challenge behind your question. Clara can help frame the decision, identify the evidence to gather, and suggest the most relevant SDI next step.

Read the original 2018 articlePreserved as historical context; the reviewed guidance above reflects SDI's current point of view.

You've spent months preparing for the change. You've successfully executed all of your change management strategies including training, consistent communication, and timely coaching and feedback. However, a month after implementation you've started to notice a little decline in performance.

One of two things are happening: the employees can't do the work, or they won't do the work. Whichever the case may be, here are a few tips to get your employees back to peak performance.

If employees can't do the work, focus on providing additional training, coaching, and resources to help them develop the necessary skills. Consider whether the training was adequate, if they have the right tools, and if expectations were clearly communicated.

If employees won't do the work, examine motivation and engagement factors. Are there barriers preventing them from wanting to perform? Are incentives aligned with desired behaviors? Is there resistance to the change that needs to be addressed?

During any change initiative, it's difficult to execute on all strategies while also monitoring the impact they are having on your people. If your organization is in the middle of a change and your employees are not adapting as quickly as you'd like, partnering with change management experts can help.

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Effective Change Management Strategies Are Not One Size Fits AllA single communication or training plan cannot serve people whose roles, risks, incentives, and moments of use are different. Effective adoption starts with the future-state work, then segments audiences by what they must understand, decide, perform, and sustain. The treatment can vary without fragmenting the operating outcome.Creative Work That Makes Change StickWhy a premium learning, motion, or communication asset has to do more than look good: it has to help a person see the work, practice the decision, and perform differently when it matters.Providing Coaches With the Right Tools for SuccessCoaching improves performance when the manager can recognize the relevant behavior, diagnose what is preventing it, hold a useful conversation, and follow through in the workflow. Tools should reduce ambiguity at those moments. They should help a coach distinguish knowledge, skill, environment, motivation, and role-design issues before prescribing more training.