I dread linking to anything posted on Medium, but [1]Performance
Reviews Are A Waste of Time by Xavier Shay echoes much of my feelings
about how useless they are.
I enjoyed Jamie Thingelstad's article write-up:
Formal feedback mechanisms in companies are hard. I've come to think
of performance reviews as an organizational insurance policy. The
process and mechanism for them insures that a bare minimum of dialog
is happening. I really don't know of anybody that feels that they
are an effective way of leading and managing teams. I think that is
summarized in the common refrain that there should be nothing new
learned in a performance review.
(Via [2]Weekly Thing Newsletter Archive Feed)
Back when I was a manager and my direct reports were local-ish (I
rotated weekly between the three cities in two countries where they
were) I had to do the annual review and instituted formal quarterly
reviews.
They sucked. They were one of the many mistakes I made as a manager.
However, I found more value - and I am told my team did as well - in
the concept of "[3]Management by Walking (or Wandering) Around". This
was hugely informal and unintentional. I didn't want to be holed up in
my office all day. My team was doing the kinds of technical work I
enjoyed but from which I had to step away. And I valued their input and
ideas in an ersatz Socratic Method to help with the bigger picture
stuff.
I liked, trusted, and valued my team, so why wouldn't I want to be
closer to them than my offices offered?
Many modern workplaces with remote workers don't necessarily have that
benefit. Tools like Slack can't really make up the gap, especially if
your team is global. The formal performance review still fits poorly.
I should have seen the performance review as a company insurance policy
back in the day.
Interestingly, I was contacted not too long ago by a colleague who felt
"railroaded" by a sudden bad performance review. I advised challenging
it with the formal HR process with plenty of CYA (Cover Your Ass).
Turns out the supervisor involved had nothing to back up their position
but my colleague had plenty to refute.
The bottom line is as always: protect yourself; document everything;
use the HR system to your advantage; and don't accept the premise.
__________________________________________________________________
My original entry is here: [4]Performance Reviews are a Waste of Time.
It posted Sat, 09 Jun 2018 21:40:40 +0000.
Filed under: business,
References
1.
https://blog.bradfieldcs.com/performance-reviews-are-a-waste-of-time-87c88d7553b4?gi=ad00d9a2689c
2.
https://us2.campaign-archive.com/feed?u=9819a09d90bc4bae56285dd82&id=275eb06135
3.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_by_wandering_around
4.
https://www.prjorgensen.com/?p=1210
