Performance Review or Effectivness Appraisal – Be Mindful of What Your Systems Communicate!
By Michelle Malay Carter on August 5, 2009
I worked?with?a client this week conducting requisite role analysis and?writing job descriptions.? Although this?project is not about?performance review, we recognize that these job descriptions?will then become the basis for performance review.
Be INTENTIONAL Please
Systems drive behavior so the systemic implications for the way the performance review is designed, and its stated strategic intent are HUGE.
Geary Rummler sums up the situation brilliantly when he says:? “Pit the most motivated employee against a poor system, and my money is?on the system every time.”
Best Intentions Don’t Always Lead to Best Practices
Elliott Jaques didn’t use the term performance review because it lends itself to measuring outputs.? What managers really need to be doing is judging employee effectiveness.? Reviewing outputs should be one consideration in judging employee effectiveness, but trying to make employee reviews 100% objective by measuring outputs a noble intention with dangerous unintended consequences.
If I am only accountable for what I have done, but not how I went about doing it – um, trouble ahead.? And if you’ve designed your performance management system to induce managers to be singly focused upon results rather than effectiveness, you’ve closed the loop on this vicious cycle.
Work is the exercising of judgment and discretion to solve problems.? We pay people to think not compute, machines do that.? Judging employee effectiveness with always involve judgment, it cannot be objective.? This makes most HR people squirm because the attorneys loom large, but the threat of lawsuits has created an unjust situation at work.? Remember, if I don’t trust the systems of an organization are fair, engagement is unlikely.
Systems Drive Behavior – The Craziness at GE Fueled By Jack Welch
My second most popular post at Mission MInded Management is my ranting about the craziness induced by GE Jack Welch’s cut the bottom 10 percent talent management system.
Performance Review or Effectiveness Appraisal?
This is why Elliott Jaques used the term, Personal Effectiveness Appraisal, rather than Performance Appraisal.? It looks at your effectiveness relative to the work of your role.? It does not involve pitting you against others in an effort to get a bell curve.
I’m OK.? You’re OK.? Let’s fix the system.
Unfair Workplaces
Have you ever “made your numbers’ while slacking off?? Have you ever missed your numbers but performed extremely effectively in light of the circumstances – loss of a large client, economic downturn?? Did your managers recognize only outputs or did s/he recognize your effectiveness?
Filed Under Accountability, Corporate Values, Organization Design, Requisite Organization, Talent Management
Comments
2 Responses to “Performance Review or Effectivness Appraisal – Be Mindful of What Your Systems Communicate!”
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I think the evolution of review system in a company, though, tends to go through the “results only” environment first. There is an appeal to “objective” results and we all find out later that results miss effectiveness.
It’s like saying you want Terrell Owens on your NFL football team because he makes 20 touchdown catches a year, the objective result, while he destroys team chemistry reducing the effectiveness of the overall team.
Is there a way we can get companies to set up systems to bypass results first and move directly to effectiveness?
Hi Scot,
Thanks for the comment and question. I think organizations need to hire executive level HR folks (level 4 capabable minimum) and hold them accountable for comprehensive people systems, not just piece and part implementation which is level 3 work. If someone is not capable and accountable for integrating the system, you will get what you have, a process created in a vacuum. L3 serial process/current operation/best practice work is valuable but if you want an integrated system, you must staff (and pay) at L4 or higher. Many organizations don’t understand what strategic HR is so they don’t want to pay executive level salaries for it. When executives only view HR as the people who plan picnics and tell employees they have body odor, that’s what they pay for, that’s what they get.
Regards,
Michelle