As
far as can be told, no one has found the performance review useful. Now GE, Accenture, Deloitte, Adobe, Gap and
many others are changing their approaches to reviewing performance. Changes include (among others): conducting
them more often, bringing more dialogue into the process, using apps, and implementing
software-based programs.
The
ineffective performance review is a symptom of a deeper issue – our
individual-centric mindset. For several
understandable reasons, we lead our enterprises while holding a belief that our
individuals (singularly or in teams) are at the center of what we are striving
to accomplish. One of those reasons is
our (and most western economies) strong societal value of individualism. It is not that individuals themselves are the
issue. Individuals are important. The issue is our mindset that individuals are
the center of our endeavor.
Every
enterprise is a living people system and the three living elements of
that system are its customers, employees and leaders. It is the connections of our
customer-employee-leader system that need to hold center stage. The more complete these connections are, the
more successful we will be. Our central
focus needs to be the quality and extent to which our leaders and employees are
delivering on our enterprise’s customer promise. Effective performance depends on how well we are working together as a system to deliver on our promise to our
customers.
Effective
“performance reviewing” occurs when we set customer promise delivery goals,
build plans and timelines to accomplish these goals, continually monitor our
progress, treat problems and failures as our problems and failures, treat
successes as our successes, give people feedback designed to help goal-attainment,
help one another to succeed, stay focused on what is working and not working,
and celebrate accomplishments all along the way.
