We’ve established that using Performance Benchmarks is one of the best practices you can adopt. So let’s get started:

I recommend a Performance Benchmark include three key sections:

  • Purpose - Overall, why are your hiring a person for this role?
  • Results - What results do you expect a great employee to produce?
  • Skills & Competencies - What special skills or other characteristics would a great employee need?

Purpose

Why are you hiring someone for this role? Answer like this: “The ROLE NAME at COMPANY exists to ________.” As an example: “The CEO of MyCo exists to grow the company by 15% per year while maintaining 20% profitability.”

Keep it simple and don’t try to cram everything in there. Sure, you want your CEO to maintain compliance with relevant laws, avoid lawsuits, develop people, and a bunch of other stuff. But, what do you really care about? Be Straight! This isn’t the place to sound good! Having a clear purpose sets the context for the job, creates clarity, and helps you get started defining the results you want.

Next, we’ll look at defining and specifying results.

See Part-2 of How to Benchmark Performance.