One of the most lively discussions on my personal blog was sparked by a post on Performance Evaluations: Do They Do More Harm Than Good. The reason I raised this question is that that they are done so badly in most places that the best performance evaluation might be no performance evaluation at all. In too many places, they are done by badly trained people, the forms and procedure often have little relevance to the people being evaluated or to organizational goals, they take a huge hunk of time (a bad 360 degree evaluation can waste weeks), and often leave both the evaluator and the person being evaluated feeling less rather than more motivated. As I said in this post,the famous quality guru W. Edwards Deming was vehemently opposed to using them at all. As Jeff Pfeffer and I wrote in The Knowing-Doing Gap:
Deming emphasized that forced rankings and other merit ratings that breed internal competition are bad management because they undermine motivation and breed contempt for management among people who, at least at first, were doing good work. He argued that these systems require leaders to label many people as poor performers even though their work is well within the range of high quality. Deming maintained that when people get unfair negative evaluations, it can leave them "bitter, crushed, bruised, battered, desolate, despondent, dejected, feeling inferior, some even depressed, unfit for work for weeks after receipt of the rating, unable to comprehend why they are inferior."
To Deming's point, there is one organization I work with -- a high tech firm with about 250 employees -- that eliminated formal reviews except when people are being considered for a promotion or when they are having serious performance problems and are placed "on plan" (i.e., where the choice is either shape up or be fired). They have about ten different levels in the organization, and everyone at the same level gets the same pay and same sized bonus. And they have been emphasizing more frequent and lower stakes feedback instead. So I know of at least one place that is having some success breaking from this often hollow and destructive ritual.
If you want to read the most compelling and complete case against the traditional performance evaluation, however,I suggest that you pre-order UCLA Professor Sam Culbert's new book Get Rid of the Performance Review. He first made this argument in the Wall Street Journal, but the book digs into this argument in far more detail and offers solutions for managers and companies who want to replace the traditional review -- or at least reduce the damage that they do. To help spread the word about the book, and to find out if as many people despise the performance review as Sam (and I) believe, he has -- a bit like the ARSE -- designed a ten-item test called How Much Do You Hate Performance Reviews? I just took it and scored a 36, which means I really hate them. Here is the first question to give you a taste:
1- My favorite performance review was:
a. when my boss correctly identified weaknesses that I was eager to work on.
b.when I was reviewed, anonymously, by many insightful colleagues I interact with, including some who want my job.
c. when my boss asked me to first review myself, allowing the boss to correct my silly self impressions.
d. when my boss forgot to give me one
Take the test and let me know what you think, and after you complete it, you can read the first chapter of the book. I predict that this book is going to spark a lot of controversy and, I hope, inspire leaders and organizations to use performance evaluations less, and to do a better of using them. At least I hope so.
