The bell curve is dead. Long live the bell curve. Since times immemorial, the Bell Curve has been a statistical reality for anything involving a large population. An organisations people, by and large are a large population. So, what exactly went wrong that organisation after organisation have had to junk the curve and seek out other ways of measuring and managing performance? Here are 5 near death experiences involving a Performance Review.
1. We made it about people
Let’s look at a performance review and understand what exactly we are trying to review. A performance management process is about the Vision-Action Continuum. How do people translate the Vision of the Organisation into on ground actions? It is therefore about the performance of the organisation and how the individual can facilitate that and in turn, how managers nurture teams of achievers in sync with the Vision.
It is about Vision translated to strategy, translated to goals, translated to actions, translated to results. In short, it is about the business. Make it about people and neither Vision will be lofty, not goals will be stretched, nor appraisals realistic.
The solution to this is to review performance in teams as well as 1-on-1. The Solution is to review Vision. The solution is to cascade strategy – upward and downward.
2. The Mean Performance and Average Performance confusion
A Bell curve centres to a mean with standard deviations on either side. The mean is where people meet reasonably stretched expectations. Mean performance is not Average performance, although mathematically mean and average mean the same. In an organisation doing well, the mean is the “Met-all-Expectations” performance, nothing to feel sorry about.
It is our inability to differentiate between Fully-Met and Partially-Met and thereby clubbing partial performance with total performance that has caused the heartburns.
Have regular conversations and course correction meetings and this issue can be resolved.
3. Curves were forced to manage budgets
CEOs, CFOs and CHROs has been guilty of dereliction of duty. Organisations can and do face budgetary constraints that force their paying capacity. In an engaged organisation, where regular conversation is part of the organisations DNA, people understand this and appreciate the limitations. Instead of forcing curves, honest conversations that give people their due for their performance while highlighting the monetary constraints will do wonders.
Also, do not forget the motivation-hygiene theory. Absence of money (Hygiene) demotivates, presence of acknowledgement of performance (motivation) motivates. Why would you give a double whammy of demotivation by not paying as well as not acknowledging performance?
4. Managers refused to take accountability for fair assessment and passed the buck to HR
This problem originated due to three reasons. One, our inability to explain mean performance and hence convince people about their ratings. Two, as an outcome of this, we forced curves, as soon as curves were forced, managers lost the impetus to do a good review and own up to the ratings they assigned. Three, to begin with there was such a dearth of people goal in Managers goal sheet, that there was no reward for doing well on people front. So who bothered? And is it that those who did bother, suffer?
The job of a Manager is to manage her team. A disproportionate part of her goal sheet therefore should be about people.
5. People competed, rather than collaborated
Let’s be honest, we encouraged this behaviour. We kept having team building exercises and went back to our respective workstations to compete for ratings. Hardly stuff teams are made of! We encouraged wrong behaviour, some of which were clearly dysfunctional – do what is convenient rather than what is right, cuddle up to business or to manager rather than insist on the right thing to do, claim your subordinates’ performance as your own rather than facilitating that performance and claiming recognition for your own mentorship in context. It is important that our performance management process assesses team goals and our contribution to those goals. Individual brilliance must be rewarded but a balance of individual brilliance coupled with team sensitivity must also be recognised.
We cannot encourage managers to be more responsible by eliminating responsibilities. Managers will become more responsible when we enable and enforce responsibility.
We cannot encourage people to be more accountable by eliminating accountability. Employees will become more accountable when differentiated on the basis of performance, call the process what you will, statistically it will continue to resemble a bell! HR Departments have been guilty of surfing fads rather than focussing their attention on getting the processes to embed properly in the culture of the organisation. Worse, many a times they have been complicit in encouraging and propagating the wrong culture. The Bell Curve or more appropriately the differentiated rating system, for essentially that is what it is, is the most recent casualty to HRs endless search for meaning without being adequately meaningful.