Development and Performance Done Differently

As a development and performance system within your organisation, 4Boxes is a tool we have been refining for a number of years.  Unlike many of the performance systems on the market today, 4Boxes breathes fresh life into your development and performance conversations.  It puts you in the driver’s seat of your own development and offers an empowering way to generate new possibilities for your role and career.

There are 4 domains of development and performance that are being transformed to make this process work better within your organisation:

1. Organisational and Leadership Responsibilities – traditionally, most performance appraisals have just focused on work output and results.  In this approach, we also reflect on how relationships are working and what development is needed.  These responsibilities all contribute toward a healthy workplace culture.
2. Intentional Structure – by committing to regular cycles that are made up of both formal and informal check-ins and also include a focus on what we’ve been doing in the past as well as a focus on what we plan to do in the future.  Most importantly, the ongoing nature of these conversations means there are no nasty surprises at the end of the year.
3. Conversational Competence – We are all on a learning journey towards doing development and performance better.  That including your managers and leaders as well.  There are important skills that we can all learn that make our conversations with one another work better.  At Oasis we say that “human interaction is a core business process”.  Accountants have accounting systems.  Tradies have hammers.  People in your organisations are learning how to better use conversations as a technology to help them coordinate action and get things done.
4. Dynamic Documentation – 4Boxes is like the “container” that holds our commitments.  It is the place where we can document what we say we are going to do and reflect on what we’ve been experiencing.  As a collaborative platform, your manager can support you in the way you document your commitments.  It then becomes an important reference point to come back to.  You can check on how things are going against what you wanted to achieve and make updates as things change.  Your manager might also have some encouragement or feedback which they can document in your 4Boxes for you to see as well.