The Sessions

HR executives agree: Traditional performance management simply isn’t working. According to the Gartner® “Effectiveness of Performance Management at Achieving Its Primary Objective,” the percentage of HR Leaders selecting “Not Effective” was "82%"

The typical performance cycle is asked to carry ten jobs at once, including rating performance, setting pay, identifying successors, developing people, and retaining them. These elements cluster in two complementary but distinct workstreams: the measurement of performance that has already occurred, which depends on standardization and comparability, and the acceleration of performance that has not, which depends on frequency and candor.

 

Taking one’s temperature does not reduce a fever.

ADP / STANDOUT, ON WHY MEASUREMENT IS NOT ACCELERATION

 
Separating your Measurement and Acceleration strategies is critical to achieving sustained success. ADP brings the research behind that separation, the evidence on where generative AI strengthens it and where it hollows it out, and a facilitator for every breakout room. You spend half the hour testing it against the cycle you actually run, and leave having named the one element to evolve first, how you will measure whether it is working, and what you would adjust.

How the Hour Works

Three movements inside sixty minutes, with a substantial share of the hour given to discussion rather than presentation.

FIRST • 25 MIN

Briefing

Performance management is ten jobs, segmented by purpose: Acceleration and Measurement.

WHAT HAPPENS

  • How the ten jobs sort into measurement and acceleration
  • Three live polls, answers shown live: which of the ten your process serves the least well, and where your own gap sits — measuring, or accelerating
  • The evidence on ratings, conversation frequency, and strengths
  • Reviews that read as though the model wrote them, the ADP-reviewed uses, and where ADP draws the line.

KEYNOTE & LIVE POLLS

THEN • 18 MIN

Breakout

You are assigned at random to a small breakout room with an ADP facilitator.

TWO PROMPTS, ONE TEMPLATE

  • Which of the jobs your process carries you would pull out first and give its own mechanism
  • What single element you would change in the next two quarters, and how you would know it worked
  • Every room captures against the same template, so findings can be compared.

PEER DISCUSSION

LAST • 12 MIN

Synthesis

Rooms return and facilitators report what surfaced across the group.

WHAT COMES BACK

  • How the group split between measuring and accelerating
  • Which of the ten jobs was named starved most often
  • The jobs the rooms could not agree a side for
  • Constraints that came up in more than one room.

FULL ROOM

Breakout rooms are not recorded. Participants receive a deidentified synthesis of key insights.

Seven Questions This Session Helps You Answer

How many of the ten is your cycle carrying, and which one is starving?

Development is the classic example: one conversation a year, at review time. No one chose that. It is what happens when one process carries everything.
 

Is your real gap measuring, or accelerating?

Most organizations have built the measurement path carefully and left acceleration to whatever individual managers happen to do. The reverse also happens, and it fails differently. Knowing which side you are short on determines what you build next.
 

Does the annual merit increase read to employees as pay for performance?

Or as something closer to a cost-of-living adjustment that varies little whether someone reached new heights or simply punched the clock. If it is the second, the arduous machinery upstream — setting measures, rating against them, calibrating — is buying you less than it costs.
 

What is a performance rating actually measuring?

Research on the Idiosyncratic Rater Effect finds that one person’s rating of another reveals more about the rater than about the person being rated; adding raters, as in a 360, tends to produce more of the same. ADP’s alternative asks leaders not what they think of someone but what they intend to do about them — four judgments recorded quarterly, among them “I always go to this team member when I need extraordinary results” and “I would promote this team member today if I could.” ADP is explicit about the limit: this does not claim to produce objective data, it does not capture all of a person’s performance, and where objective metrics already exist it runs alongside them rather than replacing them.
 

How often should performance conversations happen?

The evidence points to frequency: people who have performance conversations at least quarterly report them as more meaningful and more productive, and a review built on regular conversation arrives as a culmination rather than a surprise. The underlying design is a short recurring conversation covering where strengths got used, where value was added, what the person loved, what drained them, their priorities, and what they need. Stated that way it is a design you can run with any tooling, including none. The item on what drains someone, so a leader can clear the blocker, is the least common and the most useful.
 

Why are strengths the practical route to manager capacity?

A strength is an activity someone is both good at and energized by, and performance runs on that energy. A strengths focus simplifies connection and conversation for the team leader rather than adding another obligation — which matters at a point when burnout already limits how much more any process can ask of managers.
 

Where does generative AI help here, and where does it hollow the process out?

On one side, write-ups that read as though the model produced them, and reviews that have stopped carrying information. On the other, the uses ADP has reviewed and stands behind: a GenAI coach on demand to prepare for performance conversations; help writing goals and action plans, from SMART checks to suggested skills and learning actions.

The Performance Management Playbook 2026

Every attendee receives the Performance Management Playbook 2026, produced by Connex Partners with ADP. It is not a session recap. It is a dynamic roadmap for success, leveraging the best deidentified peer contributions and ADP's industry-leading, evidence-based research.

    • The ten-jobs framework written as an exercise you can run with your own leadership team, rather than only recall.

    • What this room found: the poll results, presented plainly.

    • What the rooms said, synthesized across every breakout, organizations unnamed.

    • Where the rooms disagreed — treated as a finding rather than as noise, and the part no other artifact this year will have.

It arrives about a week after the session, once the room's capture has been worked in.

Yours to circulate internally. Connex member sessions are confidential; the playbook attributes nothing to any individual or organization.

The Sessions

JULY 23, 2026

Session 1: Post - Application Tactics and CMMI Readiness

This session focuses on the decisions that come after CMS's initial application windows: how to turn new federal value-based payment models into practical operating choices the organization can execute, document, and get paid for.

  • Where LEAD, ACCESS, AHEAD, and related model opportunities fit the organization's strategy and risk posture.
  • How leaders are balancing payer strategy, clinical readiness, care management, documentation, analytics, and governance against available bandwidth.
  • What to prioritize in the next 90 to 180 days as decision windows move into planning and execution.
90-MINUTE VIRTUAL SESSION

SEPTEMBER 10, 2026

Session 2: Sustainability Through Population Health and Whole-Person Care

This session moves from near-term readiness to durability: how whole-person care priorities, including women's health, Food as Medicine, and dementia care through GUIDE, become measurable, fundable, and operationally sustainable.

  • Population health embedded in care delivery and tied to outcomes the organization is paid to improve. 
  • Women's health, Food as Medicine, and GUIDE/ dementia care built around reimbursement pathways rather than unfunded program activity. 
  • Care teams, community partners, and technology designed to extend capacity without adding burden the organization cannot carry. 
90-MINUTE VIRTUAL SESSION

Common Questions

What is this session, and how is it different from a webinar?

A single 60-minute virtual working session, hosted by Connex Partners and led by ADP. Live polls run inside the briefing, then you move into a breakout room with an ADP facilitator and two prompts, and the session closes by reporting what the rooms found back to the full group. A meaningful share of the hour is you talking. It is not a conference track or a vendor presentation.

 

Who should attend?

Senior enterprise HR leaders who own or influence the performance process, and who are weighing a change to it now. Titles that usually fit: CHRO and Chief People Officer, VP HR, VP Talent, VP Total Rewards, VP Learning & Development. The rooms are kept small so the discussion can stay practical and candid.

 

What is ADP’s role?

ADP leads the session. Amy Powell brings the position and the evidence behind it, ADP facilitators run the breakout rooms, and ADP co-produces the playbook that follows. There is no product demonstration and no platform pitch. Connex hosts, convenes the group, and holds the member relationship.

 

Do I need to prepare anything?

No. Bring the cycle you currently run and a view on which part of it you would change first. Everything else is supplied in the room.

 

When and where is it?

Wednesday, October 14, 1:00–2:00 PM ET (10:00 AM PT). Virtual. Sixty minutes, including the breakout discussion.

About the Hosts

PRESENTED & HOSTED BY

Connex Partners is a curated executive membership community for senior HR and healthcare leaders, built on candid peer exchange, confidential intelligence, and the trust executives need to compare decisions honestly. The network connects leaders to peer insight, vetted solutions, and the conversations that move decisions forward. Connex is convening this session as an extension of that environment.

LED & FACILITATED BY

ADP studies the workforce at scale, combining data covering millions of workers with primary research on performance, engagement, and development. ADP Research is currently partnered with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab on unbundling jobs into discrete tasks and assigning value to each, so that granular shifts in responsibility can be measured as AI redistributes them. ADP is driving this conversation, facilitating every breakout room, and co-producing the playbook that follows.

Presented By

Connex Partners
Connex Partners is a curated executive membership community for senior healthcare and HR leaders, built on candid peer exchange, confidential intelligence, and the trust executives need to compare decisions honestly. Connex is presenting this series as an extension of that environment.

 Facilitated & Moderated By

SmartRise Health
SmartRise Health is a value-based care advisory firm that helps healthcare organizations translate population-health and whole-person-care strategy into operating and financial reality. SmartRise is moderating and facilitating the roundtable, bringing their unique expertise, perspective, and experience to bear on this critical conversation.

LEADING THE SESSION

Amy Powell
Vice President, Leader Development, StandOut Powered by ADP

Amy heads leader development at ADP and has spent her career on what actually moves performance and engagement: strengths-based approaches, manager effectiveness, and career growth. She previously built ADP’s global leadership and career development framework, and has worked across Fortune 200 companies, startups, and nonprofits. Her briefing draws on ADP’s research, with client examples anonymized.
Amy Powell

Reserve Your Place

Seats are limited, and the conversation is shaped around and by the leaders in the room.