My Biggest Concerns Every Appraisal Season

 “Managers are uncomfortable when they are put in the position of ‘playing God,’” said Douglas McGregor who articulated his famous concepts of Theory X and Theory Y. In management circles, appraisal is a highly interesting and provocative topic.

Every year I have seen HR function investing time & money training assessor and assesses to ensure the appraisal process has three components Self Appraisal by Assesses, Quantifiable Performance Metrics and a Forced Ranking system (A B C) My biggest concern this appraisal season is the effectiveness of the appraisal process to ensure the utility of the three components. Lacking which creates lack of trust despite of all the investments. Assessors see this as another task hanging over them with timelines pressure for completion and they worry about attrition going up post appraisal. Assessors worry how they will force fit their people as per their quota. Once this is done, they worry about explaining same to the assesses. Those managers who are not regular with their employee feedback face this challenge more. On his part-Assesses see this as a mundane administrative process which many don’t trust much but they take it quite seriously knowing it’s linkage to their pay hikes and growth. Many assesses think the exercise is just a formality as they know their fate has already been decided.

If done properly Annual Appraisal Process is the bridge between an Employee's Career Planning and challenges of an Organization. In fact-Promotions, Job Rotations, Bonus, Salary Hikes, Training & Developments all are linked to the appraisal.

I have seen few organizations & people abusing the tools, methods and metrics all the time e.g Self Appraisal sometimes become annoying part of the process .It does not match with the ratings and feedback. It’s tricky as how can you be honest without coming off as arrogant, or shooting yourself in the foot? Many routine tasks become a Improvement Project when you have same as a target metrics which is more like an eye wash My concern is that we should not hung up trying to find quantitative metrics to support every judgment in a performance appraisal. Remember what Albert Einstein said Everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts.

Is Strategic Planning for you becoming more of annual get together ?

A few days back ,an old colleague of mine was sharing about coming from his organization's strategic planning event.He was feeling more lost after the event .I wondered if organizations have forgotten the purpose of same and it has become more of a annual get together.

Running Operations without Strategic Planning is like steering a boat without a rudder.Everyone who is leading an organization will agree to this but very few leverage the strategic planning exercise as much as they should.

In my conversation with them most of the leaders agree to the need but they as well admit that they have not leveraged their last strategic planning exercise as much as they should .With my own experience ,I can tell you that the most difficult thing to admit is leadership failure.Most of the times it's too late to fix the cause A effective Strategic Planning can help you fix that cause well in time .

When I started my corporate career ,Strategic Planning used to be done on a time horizon of at least 3 to 5 years.But let me admit that with changing times ,I have seen many times the need to revisit this on  a annual basis.The competition many times now even does not come within the industry.Who could have think phones or rather cellphones eating up market of cameras.

I thought of sharing with you the seven symptoms -Dirty Seven as I call them which can give you enough hint that it's time to go back to drawing board with your Strategic Planning Process before it's too late -

1    You are not getting the results  

2    When you feel you see different teams operating in SILOS

3    When you feel you are loosing out your customers or listening to customer complains as usual

4    Work is no longer fun,exciting or inspiring 

5    Leaders feel confused or stressed most of the times

6    Merger or Acquisition or a New team in place

7    When you are complaining about your own organization's culture

 It helps to have a "facilitator" who is "neutral" , knowledgeable about the process and preferably an outsider.Do invite us for your next strategic planning meet.I bet you will get more out of the event.

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