We had just added a new tool kit to our website on how to analyze and address performance problems (Performance Analysis Tool Kit )  when I saw the headlines about the stock market plunge.  My immediate impulse was to call my financial adviser and tell him to do something -- anything with my portfolio. 

The first article I read about the plunge attributed it to the Tuesday sell-off of stocks in China which, according to the journalist, seemed to portend ominous global economic conditions.  This speculation was followed quickly by those who blamed Greenspan's comments about a possible recession in our economic future.  The media spun many theories for the decline before and shortly after the NY Stock Exchange closed on Tuesday. 

Subsequently, clearer heads addressed the possible reasons for the poor performance of the stock market in a more thoughtful and systematic way. Articles such as Jon Markman's Is This a Market Meltdown, and the Wall Street Journal article A Shanghai Education were thoughtful and informative about how to think about and analyze the meaning, if there is any, of Tuesday's plunge. 

About now you may be asking what all of this has to do with analyzing performance problems in the workplace.  I believe that often we are  too quick to jump to faulty conclusions about one or two instances of poor performance at work.  We may decide to take quick action and reprimand or, even worse, remove the employees from the team or the project because of one or two missteps.  Or we may decide that an individual or an entire team needs training. We might take hasty steps before analyzing whether the situation calls for any response at all, let alone what action would improve the performance.  In most cases, we would save ourselves and our organizations a lot of time, money and stress if we took the time to examine the situation with a cool head to determine whether we should act, and if so, how.  

As with knee jerk reactions to the stock market fluctuations, if we act before we understand we might feel better in the short term.  Acting tends to relieve anxiety for some.  However, we may actually create more severe problems for ourselves and our organizations in the long term.  In most cases, the best thing to do is to take a deep breath, step back and look at the situation and the players in it before taking action.  This process is called performance analysis. 

Many times more than one cause is at work when performance goes awry.  To turn performance around, we need to analyze the situation and choose the solutions that are most likely to solve the problems.  Most of us do not have the time or the money to throw away on problems that don't need to be solved or on solutions that won't solve the problems that are important. 

My financial adviser tells me to look at the long-term when I decide how to respond to the stock market.  Likewise, I advise you to look at the big picture when deciding whether and how to address performance challenges at work.