Comments on: Performance reviews are a big fat waste of time

By: Jo Jordan

Jo Jordan — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:08:53 +0000

@jambo, why are you hanging out with guys that you despise. Really time to get on with your life.

I’d strongly recommend you get onto YouTube, search for Dr Rao on Googletalk. Follow his advice. In a year’s time, we expect you to be happy.

And you will owe us a drink!

By: Jambo

Jambo — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:28:51 +0000

Once again, I gained a resounding set of low scores on the company’s morally artificial performance measures. How can one gain a proper reputation in a firm, a career where the methods of scoring one’s work and performance are meaningless?

Here are the kind of goals my company adopts:-

“We aim to evolve core concepts into a set of tangible, deliverable, measurable, currency-centric services.”

“Giving product information to customers: we will highlight our approach to provide knowledge delivery that is more precise and aligned to the customer lifecycle, conveying the right knowledge at the right time.”

“… reaching this “end-state” aims to improve the overall customer health and experience of the organisation …”

All of it meaningless twaddle and garble. The guys who write this kind of garbage are paid 10 times more than the production staff

By: Dave Anderson

Dave Anderson — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:16:30 +0000

I don’t think the problems with performace reviews are so much with the form and the process as they are with management practices. With or without appraisals, bad managers will continue to not provide continuous feedback, set goals, link individual performance goals to company strategy, and altogether avoid coaching, conflict and performance management. Performance appraisals are dreaded by most because the things I just mentioned are not being done or managers have no idea how to do them or where to start. So it think it is more of a management training program. Regardless of there being a form to complete companies need to know how they are going to link performance to pay, promotions, and performance improvement plans.

By: Madhusudan Rao

Madhusudan Rao — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 07:41:21 +0000

Performance reviews can be done well if there is enough preparation done before the actual meeting of the appraisee and appraiser. Without prior due-diligence, it will result in a big waste of time. Check my notes at madhusudanrao.wordpress.com/2009/06/04/appraisals/

By: Jambo

Jambo — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 04:56:54 +0000

During my performance review, I was told by my boss that there was only one way to get a pay rise in the organisation: apply for another job, get a job offer for more money and the firm might consider matching the money. Otherwise nothing, no career progress financially at all. All promotions to date have only been in job title only, even after 9 years with the firm.

To gauge the confidence my manager my manager had in me I asked the critical question: would they have promoted me the job position I currently have? The answer came back a resounding “No”!

If I was much younger I would leave this dead-beat soul-destroying firm at the first opportunity, but unfortunately that is not easily possible.

There really ought to be stronger laws protecting the moral relationship of an employee with the firm he/she works for. Some of the comments my manager made about me might be considered slander.

The business treats its staff like primary school children. It is far, far too big. Big corporations are very ill.

By: Hildy Gottlieb

Hildy Gottlieb — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:46:14 +0000

To the way reviews have traditionally been done, I couldn’t agree more. That said, as an employer, we’ve always used review time for mutual touching base – how are we all doing as a team, and how can we collectively improve that?

We give employees questions ahead of time, and we have a discussion over lunch.
• What do you like best / least about your job?
• What do you think you’re doing great at / not so great at?
• What would you like to learn more about / talents you’re not getting to use?
• What questions did we not ask that we should have asked?
• Etc.

We find that such mutual reviews provide tremendous results, as they build upon the strengths of the employees while building strength into organizational systems, all at the same time. And we haven’t yet had a circumstance where someone didn’t know they were messing up in areas they were indeed messing up!

It comes back to what Barry Schwartz learned in the research he provided at TED http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_our_loss_of_wisdom.html
“When we are aiming at preventing disaster, we indeed do prevent disaster – but we also ensure mediocrity.” I think that talk is hugely relevant to this discussion.

The question for us comes down to this: What do we want the review to accomplish? For us, we want greatness. Sadly, most want to prevent disaster.

By: My piece for BusinessWeek.com is live. Join the debate on performance reviews!

My piece for BusinessWeek.com is live. Join the debate on performance reviews! — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 06:57:10 +0000

[...] first blogged about this back in 2008 listing the top 10 reasons why formal annual performance reviews are actively damaging to motivation and hap…, [...]

By: Jørgen Larsen

Jørgen Larsen — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:26:23 +0000

Check out todays Dilbert about performance reviews http://su.pr/2nQBhA

By: transitvans

transitvans — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 10:10:30 +0000

I couldn’t agree more with this…definitely not a fan of performance reviews!!

By: Jambo

Jambo — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 16:52:40 +0000

I am now looking forward to retiring altogether. I have given up trying to work hard. The modern organisation has destroyed the link between hard work and the motivation to do it. Throughout my career -40 years. by and large Jobsworths have ended up in managerial roles. Most large firms only make money because they have engineered a monopoly in what they produce. There is no relation whatsoever between managers what they do to manufacture that profit and the bottom line. Performance reviews are a completely phoney exercise: lies damn lies performance reviews!

In the past 9 years I have lost 25% of the value of my salary. My job has been dumbed down by a series dumb managers who have no idea how lead people or lead us to better times.

I work for a very large company. It will collapse because of the way it manages people. I feel like I work for a stale organization which has no real creativity. it will be superseded by a Far Eastern dynamic company eventually.

The top boss in our firm prefers to sail the high seas on a very large yacht.