Drill Down to Realize that Performance Management is Management
"Come on in, sit down and make yourself comfortable. Let’s take a look at how you’re doing. Is there anything that you’d like to talk about today – any pain points that have cropped up since our last conversation? So everything looks okay from here but there is always room for improvement. Why don't you tell me how you think you're doing and I'll see where there might be gaps that we can work on for next time."
Sound familiar? We all go through this (or at least are supposed to) annually. We do this because we’ve been instructed by professionals to do so. We do it because it’s the way things have always been done. And we dread it. Of course I’m referring to dentist appointments – but I could have just as easily been alluding to performance appraisals.
The difference between going to the dentist and performance management is that everyone agrees that a good teeth cleaning has its benefits – while performance management is often viewed as a time-waster which can have more damaging repercussions such as employee disengagement, alienation, and conflict between employees and their supervisors.
So why are we doing something that nobody likes, doesn’t really work, and in some cases does more harm than good? I think a good place to start is by having a frank and honest conversation around how to make performance management less dreadful. After all utilizing appraisals for documentation, compensation and development demonstrate concrete reasons to doing it and moreover Edward Lawler III points out in an article from Forbes that performance appraisals exist due to the need to motivate, direct and improve the performance of employees and organizations. Lawler continues to say that managers, by the very nature of their role, perform this function throughout the year, which lends credence to the argument that an annual performance appraisal really only serves to create a scheduled instance for feedback between an organization and its employees.
One thing no one says about humans is how well we receive negative feedback. From Peter Cappelli’s, Rethinking Performance Appraisals, we learn how PricewaterhouseCoopers is one of the many firms reshaping performance management. PwC recognized that altering performance management would require a drastic shift in organizational culture – so to spur this process they implemented a more simplified and informal performance appraisal. Cappelli writes that “much less is written down at the time, so as a consequence more has to be talked about.”
These ongoing conversations between managers and direct reports are a hallmark of many organizations that are hacking the performance appraisal process. Examples ranging from Adobe’s check-in framework to what Lawler describes as organizations certifying managers that are already doing a great job of motivating, developing and assessing performance of their direct reports as being appraisal-free, all illustrate the importance of the manager’s role in changing the way organizations utilize performance management. Lawler’s idea is a novel concept which requires a solid foundation in the identification and separation of managers for whom performance appraisals are unnecessary and those that could use training and development in this area. For those looking into this I highly recommend researching Google’s Project Oxygen, which served to definitively answer the question – Do managers matter?
Finally as organizations worldwide head into another season of performance appraisals I think we all have a great opportunity to think about what we'd like to change about our own process of performance management, and perhaps more importantly, how we can better equip our front-line managers to make the process more useful for all parties and less painful for those involved. For a fantastic overview of a more desired state characterized by continuous learning and organizational agility, have a look at a recent webcast from Bersin by Deloitte’s David Mallon, Don’t Just Do It Once – Do it All Year Long.
Also an opportunity exists for HCI members to participate in some upcoming events on this topic. Not only is performance appraisal the spotlight of our final 2014 Talent Pulse Signature research, but on December 3rd at 3pm ET join us for a webcast discussion about Making Performance Management Less Dreadful.