Performance Reviews are Coming! Performance Reviews are Coming!

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Those dreaded end of the year performance appraisals

Competencies: performance appraisals, performance management, coaching talent, decision-making

Who benefits: all employees

Consultant Usage: critical read for executive coaches and trainers in areas related to performance appraisals/reviews

What’s it about?  The last month of the year.  Lots of gifts given out during this season.  For many it also includes the dreaded Performance Review.  This, however, is generally not regarded as a gift.  It is more closely associated with the Trick or Treat of Halloween (the Trick part). 

I have written and ranted before about the general ineffectiveness and often harmful effects of this annual ritual (reviews of Abolishing Performance Appraisals and Get Rid of the Performance Review!).

Now comes more support from Dan Ariely, Duke University Professor and author of Predictably Irrational in the form of this article on decision making: Good Decisions. Bad Outcomes.

This short and most interesting article (hey, I am addicted to soccer and he works kicking a soccer ball into the first two paragraphs … what’s not to like) is on decision making and outcomes. 

His theme is that traditionally employees are punished/rewarded on performance outcomes.  These are often written as goals (somewhat like a soccer goal … oh dear, now I am getting carried away). 

The problem is it is a false assumption that any employee has total control over the environment in which he or she is performing.  Ariely specifically says “rewarding outcomes is a bad idea, particularly for companies that deal in complex and unpredictable environments.”

He gives several good examples of employees being held responsible for something entirely out of their control.

His point is that good decisions can have bad outcomes and bad decisions can have good outcomes.  Yet we hold employees, supervisors, managers and executives totally responsible for something they couldn’t possibly control.

You might just want to read this article to be prepared the next time you sit down for your annual review.  Be ready to argue for the quality of your decisions, not the outcomes beyond your control (unless of course you made some really horrible decisions but got lucky with your results).

Catch you later.
 
[tags]performance appraisals, performance reviews, decision making, coaching, coaching employees, outcomes, performance outcomes, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley[/tags]

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley (mostly) retired after 35 years in organizational consulting, training and management development. During those years he worked internally with seven organizations and trained and consulted externally with more than 90 large and small businesses, government agencies, hospitals and schools.