I haven't met anyone with a nice word to say about performance reviews.
If you are performing well and delivering results, to then have this annual review process which gives you a big list of all of the extraneous areas that you 'need to improve on' can be a complete sap on the old motivation.
Especially if it's accompanied by the typical 1-2% pay increment. That can really be a drag....
If you're going to do them, performance reviews should be about identifying the areas where people are great, and working out how to extract more of that....
Yeah, the biggest issue with management in general (and performance reviews in particular) is that it's focused on what people are doing poorly at/where they need improvement.
Good managers find out what each employee is awesome at and get them doing it. If you hire someone and what they love to do and are great at isn't what you need at your company, then you've hired the wrong person. But I know lots of people who left a job because they kept asking to be moved to a different role, different team, etc, and nothing happened.
Managers: focus on what each person is great at and loves to do.
It's a pendulum. If management blows smoke and kissy faces all day at me telling me my poo doesn't stink, that's not helpful. If they only point out what is being done incorrectly, that's not good. A blend between the two plus upward reviews (my opinion) have been best when i've seen them in use.
Unfortunately, most companies and people don't design and execute performance reviews well.
"If you're going to do them, performance reviews should be about identifying the areas where people are great, and working out how to extract more of that..."
I disagree. Performance reviews should be about performance. They should examine what one excels at and what one does poorly. They should then use those results to improve individuals, teams, and the company. Person alpha is great at TDD? Person bravo sucks at it? Pair 'em up.
Similarly the results should influence compensation in a meaningful manner? You blew your results out of the water and only get a 1% raise? That's crap. Management's performance sucks in this case (that's why upward reviews are also key).
Why do you think pairing person alpha and person bravo will magically result in person bravo acquiring the skills of person alpha? Among all the possibilites, you might just bring person alpha down without improving person bravo at all. Then, you've made everyone more inefficient.
I didn't state it would magically result in that...i'm sorry if that's what you inferred; however, i've found in the past that good people teaching about some subject tend to learn more about the subject in the teaching of said subject. Like anything else, teaching / mentoring / pairing are skills...those could be horrible as well.
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I haven't met anyone with a nice word to say about performance reviews.
If you are performing well and delivering results, to then have this annual review process which gives you a big list of all of the extraneous areas that you 'need to improve on' can be a complete sap on the old motivation.
Especially if it's accompanied by the typical 1-2% pay increment. That can really be a drag....
I've quoted this article on the topic a number of times, but it's spot on IMO - http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/0...
If you're going to do them, performance reviews should be about identifying the areas where people are great, and working out how to extract more of that....
Yeah, the biggest issue with management in general (and performance reviews in particular) is that it's focused on what people are doing poorly at/where they need improvement.
Good managers find out what each employee is awesome at and get them doing it. If you hire someone and what they love to do and are great at isn't what you need at your company, then you've hired the wrong person. But I know lots of people who left a job because they kept asking to be moved to a different role, different team, etc, and nothing happened.
Managers: focus on what each person is great at and loves to do.
It's a pendulum. If management blows smoke and kissy faces all day at me telling me my poo doesn't stink, that's not helpful. If they only point out what is being done incorrectly, that's not good. A blend between the two plus upward reviews (my opinion) have been best when i've seen them in use.
Unfortunately, most companies and people don't design and execute performance reviews well.
"If you're going to do them, performance reviews should be about identifying the areas where people are great, and working out how to extract more of that..." I disagree. Performance reviews should be about performance. They should examine what one excels at and what one does poorly. They should then use those results to improve individuals, teams, and the company. Person alpha is great at TDD? Person bravo sucks at it? Pair 'em up.
Similarly the results should influence compensation in a meaningful manner? You blew your results out of the water and only get a 1% raise? That's crap. Management's performance sucks in this case (that's why upward reviews are also key).
Why do you think pairing person alpha and person bravo will magically result in person bravo acquiring the skills of person alpha? Among all the possibilites, you might just bring person alpha down without improving person bravo at all. Then, you've made everyone more inefficient.
I didn't state it would magically result in that...i'm sorry if that's what you inferred; however, i've found in the past that good people teaching about some subject tend to learn more about the subject in the teaching of said subject. Like anything else, teaching / mentoring / pairing are skills...those could be horrible as well.