Journey To Peak Performance
Performance leadership key to company's transformation
V. Wayne Carlson knows a thing or two about leadership. After all, he's spent his career helping top companies optimize their performance and leadership so they can optimize results.
"Performance leadership is about getting people together to achieve those results," Maverik's executive director of Performance explained to CSNews during its visit in early July. "My goal is to help the organization become a transformational organization."
Maverik began its Performance department five and a half years ago, and that's when Carlson joined the company. He previously worked as a consultant in performance leadership systems, and also served as an adjunct professor teaching courses on the subject matter.
Since the department started, it has developed basic training guides; rolled out computer-based training (for 49 of 55 courses); defined roles and responsibilities for every position in the company; and worked with the information technology department to develop a proprietary performance leadership system built around scorecards measuring various metrics.
The core objective is to "make all performance visible within the organization," Carlson said.
To date, the proprietary performance leadership system has been implemented for regional directors, area supervisors and store directors. The system has scorecards measuring such metrics as Customer Fanatics Indicators, Total FRESCH Sales (short for food and refreshment excellence served cold and hot), Core Merchandise and Operational Controls. Scorecard data is fed directly from the stores' point-of-sales and compared against each person's goals, which are set several months before the start of the year.
The goal-setting process sets goals for the company, as well as for each region, area and store. Because things can change throughout the year, though, goals and objectives can shift.
To make the system easy to use, the scorecard results are color-coded: green means exceeding standards, blue is meeting standards, yellow is just below standards and red is not meeting standards. If more than 50 stores have a common issue, it gets flagged.
"When you have performance issues, some are local issues, some are regional and some are companywide. This system allows you to distinguish between local issues vs. systemic issues, so you can create the appropriate action plan," Carlson said.
Within the next two years, the Performance department has the task of implementing this proprietary performance leadership system throughout the entire organization â effectively, creating a position profile and scorecard for every employee at Maverik.
As part of this rollout, the performance leadership process is being given an adventure theme â or being "Maverikized," as Carlson puts it. It will now be known as "Maverik Expedition."
Carlson's role in Maverik Expedition is to take the lead in both defining the strategy and helping build the systems and processes. For the rollout, he will meet with the vice president of each department and then the manager of each department to find out their "deliverables" and what they want their scorecards to encompass and measure. He describes his purpose as "walking them through the process so it has a clear path from one end to the other."
The most challenging part of his job, he said, is "Machiavellian resistance." According to Carlson, when people are used to doing things in a certain way and they are personally benefitting from that approach, they have little interest in doing things differently.
But then, there's the most rewarding part of his job, which happens when the resistance ends and the change is embraced. This transformation always comes in two steps. The first is the "aha" moment when they realize how this can make a difference. Then, each element delivered from that point is its own triumph.
"It's like climbing that mountain," he said. "Each camp is its own little triumph and ultimately, when you get to the summit, you've empowered people to be better leaders."