Performance without Appraisal: Build Feedback into the System

At the start of my series on Performance without Appraisal, I listed the goals that organizations hope to achieve with annual performance appraisals and so-called performance management systems:

improve individual performance
improve organizational results
determine pay/promotion

These are legitimate concerns.

The data shows, and my experience tells me, that annual appraisals fail miserably with the first two goals. The ratings and rankings that come out of reviews may provide justification (or cover) for so-called merit pay and bonuses--but merit pay has its own problems.

In the next series of posts, I'll discuss ways to meet those goals.

In order to improve performance, we need to look at both the person and the environment. P = f (p,e).

People need information in order to improve their performance. Receiving that information at the end of the year (or even at mid-year) isn't timely. Worse, ratings and rankings are evaluations, not the sort of concrete examples of results/behavior and their impact that people need to improve.

If you really want people to have information when it will do the most good, build feedback and opportunities for improvement into the system.

Agile (when it is done properly) does this quite well. Some examples:

Programmer tests

Continuous integration and build with automated tests

Testers on the team

All of these agile practices provide information that allows individuals to find errors early.

The following agile practices provide information that allows not only individual level improvement, but team-level improvement as well.

Pair programming (especially with frequent pair changes)

Daily stand-up (whether done sitting or standing)

Task boards

Information radiators

Retrospectives

Product demos

On site or near customer

Feedback from the system may allow people to work more effectively within their current process (single-loop learning). But if you add reflective processes (e.g., effective retrospectives) teams can examine the process and the assumptions behind the way they work. That's an opportunity for double-loop learning.

If you really want individuals and your organization to do better, you need both. And you need them more than once a year.

Next: Make interpersonal feedback about work and working relationships business as usual, not an annual or semi-annual event.

Perfomance without Appraisal Part III

In my previous two posts on Performance without Appraisal, I addressed two of the basic assumptions behind rating, ranking, evaluations, and so-called performance management systems.

Here's the third assumption: Improving individual skills is the best way to improve organizational performance.

Fact:

As we've seen in the first two installments, rating, ranking, and evaluations can damage teamwork, erode trust, and lead to disengagement.

None of those are good for individual or organizational performance.

But it's worse that that.

Kurt Lewin put it this way:

P= f(p,e)

Performance is a function of the person and the environment.

Of course, we need people with the skills and desire to do the jobs they are hired for. Of course, managers need to invest in developing people.

Now, we really really attached to the idea of individual achievement in the US. We love heroic efforts. We tend to attribute too much of both success and failure to individuals (the Fundamental Attribution Error).

Performance appraisals, ratings, and rankings focus solely on the individual. They ignore the environment. When you ignore the environment, you miss the system contribution to performance.

Sadly, the system contribution often does not support productivity and results.

Let me tell you a story from a real company.

Like many companies, they had some problems. They didn't have a clear vision for their main product. Management continued to spin out new product ideas and forced multitasking. Their release process took three months. They substituted tools for real communication. Managers re-formed working teams every few months...but let teams that were floundering continue to flop around. I could go on.

Senior management decided that they needed to do something in order to achieve better business results. So they took decisive management action. They stack ranked everyone (except managers) in the technical organization, and then culled the bottom 10%.

I doubt they noticed that organizational performance did not improve. If they did, I suspect they concluded that they needed to cut another 10% before things would get better. Had the managers addressed even one of the problems with the work system, they could have realized improved productivity and results.

Pfeffer and Sutton (Hard Facts) reference many studies done across several industries--including software--that indicate that even the most talented individual cannot perform competently within a bad system. They call it "The Law of Crappy Systems." If you hire talented people and they fail to produce results it's a sign you have a crappy system.

So managers, we need to start seeing the system and improving the system, so that everyone can do a better job, and the organization sees better results.

You know the final irony? I've talked to several HR professionals who tell me that they have to put appraisal processes in place to force manager to give feedback at least once a year. That is so wrong on so many levels (as I have said many times before).

We can do better.

And in my next post, I'll start telling you how.

Shocking Survey Results about Performance Appraisal

The landed in my inbox this morning:

In a famous Leadership IQ study, we surveyed 48,012 CEOs, Managers & Employees about their performance appraisals. Here's the shocking results: Only 13% of Managers & Employees thought their performance appraisals were effective. And only 6% of CEOs thought their appraisals were effective. We also discovered that only 14% of employees say their performance appraisal conversation offered meaningful and relevant feedback.

Actually, I'm not shocked by these results. Not even surprised.

What is shocking is that many organization continue to add layers of process, systems, and training, in an effort to make a fundamentally broken concept work.

I'm not saying we don't need feedback. We do need information about results and behavior. That information needs to be relevant, timely, and actionable. For ideas on how to make feedback useful look here.

I'm not saying that we don't need to have conversations about performance.

I'm not saying managers don't need to make decisions about whether a person's performance matches the needs of the job.

But the typical performance appraisal process fails to give useful feedback, fails to promote meaningful conversation, and seldom leads to decisions about fit for job.

FAIL.

When there's disagreement on feedback data

In my previous post, I described a framework for offering feedback on work results and work relationships.

Step 2 is Describe behavior or results. Use neutral language and examples. If the person doesn't recognize himself in the description or agree with the data, the conversation is over. Labels, comparatives, and absolutes raise defenses.

Karen asks:

.... in the case of, "If the person doesn't recognize himself in the description or agree with the data, the conversation is over", what is the manager's next step?

I don't know the specifics of Karen's situation; here's my general advice

First, check your own language.

Adults almost always reject negative labels. (Unless they've been hearing them since they were tiny children, in which case their self-perception has probably become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But that's another story.) So a label such as, inconsiderate, unassertive, sloppy, is not likely to move the conversation forward and achieve change.

Descriptions that are vague can have the same effect. I met a woman who was told in her annual review, "You are too nice." Her manage didn't provide any examples of behavior or impact. That left the feedback receiver struggling to figure out what her manager was talking about. She was reviewing past events trying to sift out what event could possibly have triggered the comment. When people are left to do this, they often pick an incident completely unconnected to the genesis of the feedback, with predictable consequences.

Absolutes invite people to find the one counter example to your statement. If you tell some one he is always late, he will find the one instance where he was on time.

Labels work against perceptions that the feedback is fair, and that the feedback giver has good intentions. (Point 1 and 2 on conditions for effective feedback) When the feedback receiver questions the label, and the conversations devolves into yes-you-are/no-I'm-not, violating Point 3 on conditions for effective feedback. Which in turn creates the feeling neither the process for developing the feedback, nor the way it was delivered is fair (Point 4).

It's really hard to break the labels habit and eliminated loaded words. Really hard.

Even when your language is clear and neutral, it could be that the person needs time to process what you've said. That not unusual, especially when the new information conflicts with their own self-perception. People are generally more receptive if they've heard something about that area of behavior more before. Pushing some one to acknowledge your point of view during the initial conversation will fuel the defense dynamic.

Some options:

• offer some time to process with an agreement to revisit the feedback in a few days.

• suggest that the person talk to a handful of trusted peers to see if they have noticed the behavior

• ask the person to monitor his own behavior for a period of time and see if he notices himself doing what you've described


All this assumes that the organization can tolerate the behavior for a short time longer as the person works through his process. And it assumes that you have a generally positive relationship with the person. The timeframe you set depends on the impact of the behavior.

In a hierarchy, there’s always “the Big Game” of who get to tell who what to do. Playing that game is a loosing strategy.

You might shift your approach and focus on the desired outcome rather than the current behavior. If the behavior is getting in the way of that person doing his job, you can shift the conversation to “You’ll be more successful when you do ________. Here’s why.”

If it's something like claiming to be unaware that he's pinching another person's arm (or other body parts...believe me, I’ve seen all sorts of astonishing behavior in the workplace), it's time for that person to go. In such a case, or if it's a legal or ethical violation, have your ducks lined up with HR or the company lawyer before you go into the conversation.

There's another sort of case, where other people are reporting behavior that the person denies. It could be a conspiracy, but that's not too likely. In this case, your data is second hand, so you have to avoid the tattle tale trap. Rather than report what other people have said, which puts you squarely in the trap, report your data.

Here's an example from my days as a manager.

My group worked on investment accounting software for a big financial services firm. The system included an overnight cycle. When we put new code into production that affected the overnight cycle, the group rotated on-call responsibility, just in case something went wrong. When something did go wrong, the operations people would phone the person on call to fix the problem.

One of the group members, Joni was more than cranky when she was awakened from her sleep. She yelled, she swore, she told the ops people they were stupid.

Obviously, the ops people weren’t about to put up with Joni's abuse. So they skipped Joni's name when she was first the call list and dialed the person who was second on the list. That's when I heard about the problem.

My first step was to support people to speak directly to Joni. Feedback is almost always most effective when it comes directly from the person who is affected by the behavior. Plus, it avoids the emotional escalation of kicking the problem up the hierarchy.

Sad to say, Joni she yelled at the people who spoke to her directly.

I hand not observed her abusive behavior directly, so I wasn't going to get any where with second hand reports. I had seen enough of Joni in action to know she was sometimes impatient and brusque with her peers even when I was in the room, and I'd coached her on that.

So, I talked about the data I did have related to her abusive manner with the ops folks:

I had one person who was upset that his "first call" rotation was essentially doubled, since he got called when he was first and when Joni was first.

I had three ops people who were feeling abused.

I talked about the impact it was having on our relationship with ops, the team and our ability to get work done.

I acknowledged that I hadn't seen the behavior first hand. I asked her for her perspective.

She denied yelling or swearing, and asserted that the ops people were stupid and incompetent.

My response was, "That may be your perception. Whether you think they are competent or not, it's not acceptable to yell and swear at people."

I talked about consequences. I told Joni that I wasn’t going to get into a he said/she said argument, but that it seemed clear that something was amiss since several people were upset by their interactions with her.

And I let her know what would happen if there were more complaints about her swearing and yelling at people.

I’d reviewed the HR policy, so I knew that the next time someone complained, I could ask for a formal HR inquiry.

I didn't hear about Joni abusing people again, probably because she quit a short time after this conversation.

Consequences do sometimes focus the mind.

If you think my approach seems harsh, consider the No Asshole Rule.

Praise Sandwich Tastes Icky, II

Art Petty posted Why I Hate the Praise Sandwich.

Praise sandwich, as you recall, involves buttering someone up with a compliment or praise, stating a criticism, and then fluffing them back up with another bit of praise.

Sounds icky, too, doesn't it?

Art offers:

5 Reasons Why the Sandwich Technique is a Truly Bad Practice:

It is a crutch that is solely for the benefit of the giver, not the receiver.

It obfuscates the real message.

It confuses the receiver by watering down the key message.

It destroys the value of positive feedback by linking it with the negative. Don't forget that positive feedback is a powerful tool for reinforcing the right behaviors and the sandwich technique devalues this tool.

It is insulting to the receiver and borderline deceitful. "Bob, you did a great job on XYZ, but… ." It's like a pat on the back followed by a sucker punch followed by another pat on the back.

I agree. Been sayin' so for years.

I commented on Art's post:

I find that many people (including managers) don't know how to offer feedback in a direct and respectful way. I teach people to use this framework:

Create an opening so you are sure it's a good time for the person to hear you… not when he's getting ready for a big meeting or rushing to pick up his kid.

Describe behavior or results. Use neutral language and examples. If the person doesn't recognize himself in the description or agree with the data, the conversation is over. Labels, comparatives, and absolutes raise defenses.

Describe the impact. If there's no impact, why are you having the conversation?

Make a request. You may have a specific behavior in mind, or you may want to engage in problem solving. It depends on the situation.

Finally, don't sell past the close. If the person gets the point after you describe the behavior, zip it. Otherwise, it feels like you are beating a dead horse.

My experience is that people are likely to accept critical feedback when:

1) the giver or source is believed to be reliable

2) the receiver trusts the intentions of the giver

3) the receiver has a chance provide clarifications

4) the process is fair--both the way the feedback was developed and the way the feedback was communicated

Praise sandwich tends to erode trust in the feedback givers intentions, and once that's gone, there's not much chance any useful information will get through.

What to do with a struggling employee

Esther Schindler recently put forward a scenario about a struggling employee named Frank, and solicited advice from her network.

Briefly, the scenario is this: Frank was a great maintenance programmer, but the company is retiring the system he worked on. Frank has moved to a new project in a new language and he's not catching on. (Full scenario is here.)

The Other Esther summarized the advice she received in When the Job Changes But the Programmer Doesn't and When the Job Changes But the Programmer Doesn't Part II: Saving Frank's Job.

My full response (excerpted in Esther Schindler's posts):

It sounds like Frank has been a valuable employee. But now he's in a position where his skills and preferences aren't a good match for what the position requires.

So first, I'd think about whether there is a way to make use of his maintenance programmer skills on the new system. Can he fix bugs? Can he contribute domain knowledge in some other way?

It's not unusual for people who are learning a new skill to follow rules rigidly. They haven't internalized the new knowledge to the extent that they can see possibilities and use the skill intuitively.

The scenario doesn't say how Frank has gone about learning the new language. Pair programming can be a great way to learn, and pairing a beginner with an expert can be enlightening for both.

I'd also look at how the work is chunked up. It may be that if Frank broke the work down into more discrete 1-2 day chunks he'd be able to make better progress.

If there's no way to use Frank's skills, then Frank's manager needs to have another forthright conversation with him, explaining his expectation and concerns, and hearing Frank's point of view, as well. Chances are pretty good that Frank is as distressed as his manager is.

But before the meeting, Frank's manager needs to decide if he's willing to give Frank another chance, or give him time to find another job within the company. If not, get the ducks lined up with HR to end Frank's employment.

If Frank wants to try once more to get up to speed, they need to agree on a plan with specific actions. They need to agree how they'll evaluate whether Frank is making the kind of progress the job requires. And the manager has to put a time limit on it--weeks not months.

If Frank recognizes that he's just not in the right job, and he's an employee that can still make a valuable contribution somewhere in the company, set a time frame for Frank to find a job internally--weeks not months. Start looking for Frank's replacement. If Frank hasn't found an internal job by then, end his employment.

If Frank isn't a good candidate to stay at the company, don't let the situation drag on forever. The current state is painful for everyone. And while firing Frank will probably be painful, it won't be as difficult as the alternative.

A couple of things to emphasize:

Allow weeks not months to turn the situation around. That means 2-6 weeks, no more.

Choose based on how big a hit you can take on the project. Look at the trade offs. Some times no body is better than a warm body. If working with Frank is taking significant productive time away from others for little potential return, 0 weeks is the right answer. As Jerry Weinberg asked, "Is this a business or a charity?"

If Frank can be valuable to the company, but not on your project, set a time frame for *Frank* to find a new job. You are not a job placement service, and not your job to find him a new assignment. It's Frank's job to find that next assignment. You can offer to introduce him to people or give a reference, but Frank needs to do the work. And set a time limit 2-6 weeks, no more, depending on your project needs. Do not wait until Frank has found a a new assignment to start looking for his replacement.

The Benefits of Peer Feedback

Peer feedback is a core skill for collaboration. It's impossible to work closely with out running into some bumps: differences, disappointments, and disagreements. Peer to peer feedback can help keep working relationships on track and improve results (and it keeps the manager out of the transaction so it doesn't be come a *big deal*).

I teach about feedback in both my team collaboration workshop and management workshops. "But does it work in the real world?" some ask. Ola Ellnestam blogs How I Learned about Feedback.