
Reinventing Performance Management - Flenser
https://hbr.org/2015/04/reinventing-performance-management
======
willchen
Ex-deloitte employee here. I left before this change in performance review
took place, but here's some thoughts & context based on my experience:

\- People may be concerned that relying on four questions may be too narrow,
but at the end of the day, regardless of which questions are officially on the
performance eval form, those are the questions that matter. At Deloitte, I had
to consistently find new projects every 2-6 months, and the question of "Given
this person's performance, I would always want him or her on my team" is not
hypothetical. Project manager and partners answer this question implicitly all
the time when they hand-pick their team members, now it's just answered more
explicitly. At the end of the day, if you're an employee, what's more
important to your career: that your boss thinks you're an Excel whiz or that
she enjoyed working with you and will put you on an interesting, challenging
project next month?

\- I think some of the criticism that these questions essentially about your
likability or ability to "manage upwards" are fair. But for a firm, whose
business is all about providing client service, evaluating people on their
people's skills for "managing upwards" seems like a reasonable proxy for their
ability to "manage clients", which really is a valuable skill to the company.
On the other hand, for engineering orgs, these four questions may need to be
rephrased - (e.g. off the top of my head: "do I want this person responsible
for delivering and maintaining critical production services").

~~~
exelius
I especially agree with your second point. While many performance measurement
programs do screen for the most likable or personable people, this is actually
intended in consulting. Consulting is about selling work, and you will sell
more work if people like you and you're pleasant to work with. And you're
right, managing upwards can be rephrased as "getting people to do what you
want them to do without any authority to make them do it" \-- basically the
entire job of a management consultant.

That said, many consulting companies have overly-complex performance
measurement systems. At the end of the day, if you're not very good, you won't
get staffed on projects and you will be laid off. If you are good, push for a
promotion and you'll probably get it. None of that changes based on the
measurement system you use; because people at either end of the spectrum
will/won't game whatever measurement system you enable. And IMO if you can get
the same results with a lot less overhead, it's a win/win.

------
uniformlyrandom
That is weird. They ask to rate not the person, but your feelings against the
person.

Yes, this very much simplifies manager's job - but remembering Kahneman's
Thinking Fast and Slow, people are notoriously skewed at measuring things
through their feelings. A lot of personal factors, including levels of sugar
in reviewer's blood, heavily affect this type of 'judgment'.

I can see how Deloitte may be happy about spending less time on bullshit, and
I applaud to that. I can also see how this new system is no different in
consistency of the results compared to the previsions one - both are pure
bullshit, so weighted random number generators work approximately the same
when asked for 4 of 10 weighted random numbers. However, I really do not see
this as progress. This is more of a regress - they see the problem, but they
offer the solution that makes the managers slightly happier, and does nothing
to precision or fairness of the system.

What we need to do it stop blindly applying a sales-oriented performance
rating system to engineers.

We need specific set of quantified criteria for each group, and resulting
rating should be calculated independently of the rater. We do not need more
manager-oriented performance systems. We need to look at these systems form
the point of the employee who is being rated.

~~~
bitL
High school popularity contest...

~~~
bitcuration
This is exactly what I've being saying for years of that project basis
individual competition, it's a a popularity contest, albeit at high school
level, defines today's most IT organization.

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mziel
_1\. Given what I know of this person’s performance, and if it were my money,
I would award this person the highest possible compensation increase and
bonus.

2\. Given what I know of this person’s performance, I would always want him or
her on my team.

3\. This person is at risk for low performance.

4\. This person is ready for promotion today._

Questions 2-4 seem OK, but question 1 is problematic. I've been conducting
data analysis on questionnaire data and people can't be expected to imagine
"if it were my money". It's not their money, it won't be taken from their
paycheck. Basically the stakes are not real. Which in turn will create in
upwards bias.

~~~
StavrosK
That probably doesn't matter, as long as the bias is uniform.

~~~
mziel
Yes, but what does the question actually capture? What's the incentive not to
agree with that statement? Or maybe everyone puts "4" instead of 5 to hedge
their bets?

Don't want to deride the question without seeing someone from Deloitte expand
on that, but the "as if it were own money" seems redundant at best.

~~~
eli
I'd be glad to give everyone a raise with someone else's money -- when there's
no downside to doing so. I think the point is to remind you that there's a
cost associated with that.

~~~
mziel
But there is no cost/downside. At least for you. What I'm arguing is that this
"reminder" is not effective.

------
angdis
It is perfectly fine to applaud Deloitte, sadly, this concept won't spread.

HR departments are so entrenched with annual review bullshit that even if they
call it a different name and put a new "spin" on it, it will just end up being
even more disappointing shit-work for everyone.

~~~
rainingtomorrow
I do performance management for Fortune 500 company. Literally two weeks ago
we began redesigning the model.

It may sound that it would be difficult to change what has been going for
years, but there are several factors that make it easier than it seems so:

\- Normally performance management process is managed by few people even in
companies sized in 10,000's of employees. Even if ultimately the decision is
made by HR executives, it is easier to make such decision when there are so
few directly involved people. These people are normally part of corporate, and
they just provide the process for local HR that usually has no real say in how
performance management is done.

\- Both corporate HR and local HR are tired of this too. We have been hearing
these points for long time. Every single year enforced/recommended (amongst
other points) distribution brings heated discussions yet nothing is done.
Executives hear this.

\- Talent Management system vendors are becoming more flexible and allowing
different models for performance management. Such system is needed, but no one
would ever sign up for developing it themselves.

In overall, I think it is a matter of time till this spreads. Promoting the
wrong people or blocking the good ones is very expensive.

~~~
Yhippa
> In overall, I think it is a matter of time till this spreads. Promoting the
> wrong people or blocking the good ones is very expensive.

I have worked for several companies that follow Trend-driven Management and
would not be surprised to see this spread amongst the CEO's and execs of major
companies.

------
5h
I wonder, will four questions will grow into six, eight, twelve whatever,
which will then require a form or series of forms to be completed & some sort
of redundant moderation to ensure they aren't dealing with individual
perceptions again etc etc, eventually evolving into what they have just done
away with.

~~~
colinhowe
I've seen this happen at companies before. The other side I've seen is:

    
    
      HR bod: sorry, you can't give everyone a 5 on your team, someone has to have a 1
      Manager: but, I've hired my team sensibly!
      HR bod: sorry, you can't give everyone a 5 on your team, someone has to have a 1
    

:(

~~~
rlonstein
Yes, seen that. One variation I experienced was separating retention rank (how
critical is this person to the team, dept., etc.) from performance rank (how
effective and skilled is this person). That was a bit of a painful exercise as
it was very clear to me that the organization was sifting for a reduction in
force despite high performance after having culled the low performers.

~~~
pc86
It makes sense on the most basic level of "we have 5 high-performing
individuals but we only have enough work to support 4."

If you have a group of people who all get 5's on a review but you are required
to let one of them go, how do you do it in a way that isn't picking a name out
of a hat, or the first person to get stuck in traffic and be late to a
meeting?

~~~
digikata
But one knows what the numbers can be used for when assigning performance
review numbers to people. So instead of picking a name out of a hat, the
process is to pick a number out of a hat corresponding to a name?

------
IgorPartola
"Deloitte started using these four simple questions to do performance reviews.
You won't believe what happened next"

~~~
TheGrimDerp1
HR departments hate it!

~~~
haddr
They got all their employees happy with this one weird trick!

------
jevgeni
Accenture followed suit:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-
leadership/wp/2015/07/...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-
leadership/wp/2015/07/21/in-big-move-accenture-will-get-rid-of-annual-
performance-reviews-and-rankings/)

------
jackgavigan
The four questions seem sensible but having employees' evaluation judged
solely by their team leader seems guaranteed to create a culture of managing
upwards and groupthink.

------
m52go
Just be 'radically transparent' (a la Bridgewater) and don't be hesitant to
give feedback in REAL-TIME. That's the only way to consistently improve. It's
surprising to me that places like Deloitte haven't embraced this yet...instead
favoring traditional political correctness and 'professionalism' and
frustratingly clunky methods like this.

~~~
pc86
Yes god forbid someone be expected to show "professionalism" in a professional
environment.

~~~
m52go
Your comment is a perfect example of why companies don't adopt this.

Critical feedback is too often construed as 'unprofessional' or
'inconsiderate' when it's simply a subjective statement on the way someone
does something.

If we as a people could take feedback more constructively rather than
misconstruing it all as some kind of pejorative statement of our character, we
wouldn't have this issue.

So really the problem is that we don't have ENOUGH professionalism. Too much
personalism and not enough professionalism. The personalism gets in the way of
true, transparent feedback.

~~~
ci5er
I have a verbal 'tick': I ask 'Why?' all the time.

When I ask it, I mean: "What was your thinking that lead to you making that
statement or claim?"

I learned some time ago that regardless of MY intent in asking it, somehow,
people act as if they are being attacked or disagreed with.

I'm just looking for context and trying to understand the reasoning process.

If we, as a culture, can't even ask "Why?", then I have to assume that
(professional) real-time subjective assessment would be a big non-starter for
people. Culturally, in the US, anyway.

~~~
m52go
A large part of my motivation to start my own company is to define my own
culture. How is one to progress without asking 'why'? How is asking 'why' once
a year (and in abstract, politically-correct terms) supposed to help us? Why
not do it better, faster?

And for the commenter above, how is asking 'why' not professional? Clearly
there are professional ways of going about it.

I wonder why so many people think like that. Especially when it's understood
that when bad things happen in business, it's 'just business as usual' (e.g.,
getting fired is often said to be 'just business as usual'...nothing
personal). Then why can't we be more transparent about feedback in the
workplace?

For the record, I think what you're calling a 'tick' is a virtue.

~~~
ci5er
> For the record, I think what you're calling a 'tick' is a virtue.

Very kind of you to say. The automatic way I point the question at anybody who
crosses my path may say otherwise.

I have noted that in personal argumentation, in the US and Japan, that the
word is not often not used as a tool for inquiry. I've seen it wielded more as
an accusation or bludgeon, and it may be this dual-use that make people
sensitive to the word itself.

The child's response to any answer with a "why?", is truly a really excellent
algorithm for getting to the bottom of things.

------
ylg
TLDR; In 2014 HR conducts a survey to find out what the people they hired
think of HR's other surveys and find plenty of work for HR to spend the next
year on and publishing about to arrive at a four question survey for release
in 2015.

------
jessaustin
The _actual_ article:

[https://hbr.org/2015/04/reinventing-performance-
management](https://hbr.org/2015/04/reinventing-performance-management)

~~~
pathy
Thank you!

Very interesting article. But I wonder, can these four questions really
capture the performance of employees? It seems better than many systems but
perhaps it is too narrowly focused.

~~~
MatthewWilkes
I've worked with Deloitte employees on a few occasions, in my experience their
managers (and often several layers of managers) have worked directly with each
member of staff and know them well. The annual reviews seem to an outsider to
be an important formality for justifying what is already relatively clear.

