Week 11: Turning Performance Insights into Actions

This week, we’re going tactically strategic…

What do I mean by this?

A lot of our work in people ops should be designed to solve the challenges of the end user, our employees.

One of the biggest frustrations for employees is the lack of quality feedback from managers - a huge strategic issue because:

• When you don’t intervene in performance challenges early, folks rarely recover when they reach a PIP - costing time and money

• When you need to build talent density, accepting low performance is not possible

• When you’re doing a great job and others around you coast, you get frustrated - so we see unwanted churn

• When you’re trying to develop your capabilities but your manager doesn’t give you the time - again, you’ll leave

So we end up with high costs in time and money from under performers and strategic churn risks in high performers.

I’ve written a lot about this in my past blogs on management:

https://medium.com/people-collective/the-art-of-managing-underperformers-maybe-its-you-maybe-it-s-us-603228e521e1 

So it’s a big strategic problem, but one which requires tactical intervention, and today I’m going to walk you through how to make that easier, for you and for managers.

By removing the analysis and prepping of actions, we free up time for everyone to better and more quickly engage.

⚡️💪 

So, this week, I’m going to focus on:

• A deep dive into how to improve actions RE performance interventions

• Sharing my quick guide and action plan for managers + customGPT for engineering managers specifically

• Walking through the news of the week

Table of Contents

• Who Am I?

  • PeoplexAI updates this week:

• 🎯 Deep Dive of the Week

  • 🤯 PS - I created all of the above in under 20 min …

  • 💡 Quick Win of the Week

• 📰 News That Matters for HR

• 👋 Let's Connect!

Who Am I?

For new subscribers, I’m Matt Bradburn. I was VP People at Peakon, built and sold the DBR community to Talentful, built and sold People Collective to Scede and now combing People Ops expertise with AI to solve my clients challenges.

PeoplexAI updates this week:

Website - updates to come next week - I had a few folks ask for all the resources in one place, which makes sense with the 30+ notion pages I have now, currently using Supabase and Make.com to get these from Notion automatically onto my site 😅

Course - Cohort 2 halfway through, just covered taking data to actions, perfect timing… Join in end of May for next cohort 🥳 My 4 week, highly practical AI powered HR course, now with a consistent $100 discount for subscribers 🫶

USE THIS LINK: https://maven.com/peoplexrobots/ai-powered-people-ops?promoCode=Friends 

Products - www.joinfraction.com - more on this later…

Consulting and Training - Kicked off with amazing client, and 2 more folks looking close to closing, if you would like to discuss, then get in touch here: https://peoplexai.co/ 

Community - Over 80 people joined, going to start planning regular building sessions and engaging more… Also going to add link to website.

🎯 Deep Dive of the Week

So as I said, this week, I’m taking a different approach, instead of a step by step automation and read, I’m giving you all a little deep dive video and showing you how to turn performance feedback into career frontier advice for your managers.

Why?

Because those little nudges for managers are the tactical enablers which help them become more strategic, saving the company time and money, but not only that

Also driving growth of capability for managers and their teams.

Enhancing Feedback for Managers 📈 - Watch Video 

🤯 PS - I created all of the above in under 20 minutes….

I want to help as many folks in the space build their skills as much as possible over the next year, so if you want to 10x your skills, with 4 hour long live practical sessions and 4 30 minute videos going far deeper than my newsletter, this is for you!

You can find the detailed syllabus below, sign up today as spaces limited to 20 people…

💡 Quick Win of the Week

Not 1, but 2 nice useful tools for you this week!

Example CustomGPT for Engineering Managers:

• Precision over guesswork: This GPT helps engineering leaders diagnose individual and team skill gaps against your levelling framework—no spreadsheets or vague gut feels required.

• Accelerate targeted growth: It turns feedback, performance data, and framework criteria into clear, role-aligned development actions managers can take immediately.

• From framework to reality: It operationalises your progression model in daily team conversations, helping managers apply it consistently and meaningfully.
  
  https://chatgpt.com/g/g-67ee75571f2c819183442edf81b0fba8-engineering-skills-gap-closer 
  

Guide for Engineering Managers and Leaders:

• Bridge the HR–Engineering gap: This guide equips managers with the tools to turn feedback into growth, making your levelling frameworks and review cycles actually stick.

• Promote retention through development: When managers coach with clarity, engineers feel seen, stretched, and supported, reducing flight risk and performance drift.

• Scale leadership, not micromanagement: It helps engineering leads step into their multiplier role, creating a culture of ownership, not dependency.
  
  https://peopleleaders.notion.site/Engineering-Manager-Action-Guide-Coaching-Developing-Your-Team-1ee1569da34480c9894ff23a56937e4b?pvs=4 

📰 News That Matters for HR

I’m actually just posting a couple things I find interesting this week, as none of you click my news articles 🤪

👋 Let's Connect!

Finding this valuable? There's more where this came from!

✨ Share this newsletter with your HR network

🔗 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattbradburn/ 

💌 Have questions? Just hit reply!

Remember: AI in HR doesn't have to be complicated. Let's figure it out together, one practical step at a time.