Evaluating Your Manager

I keep on getting questions how do I go about releasing an employee in a management position at the same time satisfying my concious that I have been fair and not loose any sleep about it. Is it only Financial results?. or maybe his or her attitude with his peers and colleague?.

Its very difficult, especially when dealing with Human being, one need to be as less subjective as possible, but that by itself is practically impossible.

So here is what I do. I use the C.A.R concept. Where the C stands for Capacity, A stands for Achievements and R stands for Relationship. And set a grade in each area and total it up.

So lets say a certain Manager has the capacity of doing his/her job, not only technically, but also managerial capacity, thinking out of the box, come up with solution for complex problems. So he/she gets a 10/10. But that same manager fail in Relationships with peers and colleges, everyone seems to resent him or her for one reason or another, including the client. So he/she gets Zero/10

And when it comes to Achievement, which is the only objective part of the evaluation, its either black or white, no grey area there. We set Hard KPI at beginning of the year, if he or she achieves it, full score. So lets say for the sake of example he or she scores an 8/10

Now before I total up the score, I set a weight for each category depending on the Manager area of responsibility in accordance to his or her Job Description. For example, a Manager is into Business Development, than his Client Relationships are Vital. So the Relationship Part would have a higher weight to lets say Capacity. Another Example, a A manager who accountable for P&L, The Financial Achievement Part would hold more weight to lets say Relationship. So forth and So on

Back to the example of Business Development. The R parts has the most weighing lets say 50%, the A parts holds lets say 30% and the C part holds 20% (Mind you, we agree this weighting percentage at the beginning of the year, so no ambiguity there). So if the managers scores Zero in R, 10 in C and 8 in A. Well you got the idea, you can do the simple math.!

So if I get a Manager thats gets low in all three aspects especially in the areas his or her job matters the most. I would most likely coach that manager, and if it Persist I would have no choice but to let that Manager Go.