Performance Evaluation through my daughter’s jigsaw puzzle

On a cold December evening, my young daughter was working on a jigsaw puzzle, a more interesting diversion than my work task at hand. “Baba,” she calls me, with the Hindi word for Dad, “I love these puzzles, all these different shapes and edges. It’s like I’m solving a mystery.”

“What if each piece was round?” I ask her “Would that be as much fun?”

“NO,” she replies, laughing, “If all the pieces were round, that wouldn’t be a jigsaw puzzle at all”. “How would the pieces stay in place, how would they lock into each other? The puzzle would never be stable because, without different edges and shapes, the pieces could not connect. That would be a silly design.”. She shows me the picture of the completed puzzle on the box. She asks me if I can play with her instead of working on my laptop. I tell her that I can’t play because I have one last task I must finish for work.

Yes, I said task, because it’s the time of year for performance evaluations (PE), and that’s how most of us treat this dreaded end-of-year chore—that thing we have to do when we’re tired and trying to get into the holiday spirit. I think of my exchange with my daughter as I turn back to my laptop, wondering why PE feels like a task instead of an important project, like the other projects we do year-round. Is it because the PE systems are outdated and have continued to fail a majority of the US workforce without providing substantial results?

Round vs Sharp Edges

I have been leading and evaluating individuals and teams for quite some time now. In my experience, PE seems focused on making us all well-rounded individuals (like round pieces) instead of helping us to sharpen our edges. I have yet to see PE systems that produce true reflections of what worked and what did not throughout the year. Typically the PE questions are designed to prompt you to tell us how amazing you are in your job? Discuss your accomplishments. Some PE systems ask you to rate yourself against your company core values? Sort of an odd question to ask because I believe integrity, honesty, mutual respect, etc. are table stakes. Then it asks you what is your development plan? Finally, we come to that powerful line where you are asked to rate yourself:

1.    Are you superb?

2.    Are you average?

3.    Are you sub-par?

 And to make the top talent feel even more special, some PE formats add an extra rating: Are you ultra-superb?

The rating system is designed to create a competitive environment vs a collaborative environment. We all know that nothing successful happens without a collaborative team. There is no ‘me’ in a team and you need everyone around you with different skills to make a good team.

I believe that current performance management systems fail because they foster homogeneity. Like SAT exams, they do not account for cultural differences: for example, an outspoken employee might be viewed as a leader in America but simply rude in India or Japan.

PE systems also fail to value passion, which I view as the edge a team member brings to the organization. Evaluations tend to focus on weaknesses and areas that need improvement, driving individuals to develop a plan to do better in areas they are less passionate about rather than hone their edges of excellence. But as a team leader, I don’t need everyone on my team to be well-rounded (or have round edges). One person’s weakness may be another person’s strength. If one is a good project manager and the other a creative designer, and another one a good event manager, why do we try to make a good creative designer an average project manager, and a good project manager an average event manager, and a good event manager an average designer? We ask a tactical expert that he/she needs to add strategy as a development plan and get a strategic person to add execution as a growth area. Instead of fueling passions and valuing strengths, PE implies that we should sand down the edges until each person can check off “Acceptable” or “Superior” for every skill—an unrealistic goal at best.

Building an effective team is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle, in which each piece is a different shape with distinct edges and the edges interlock so that every piece completes the deficiency (blindspots) of another piece. Viewed in this way, when we put the pieces together to complete the whole picture, that picture is the vision of the company, and that is the puzzle we are striving to solve.

What I would like performance evaluation to be

For performance evaluation to be meaningful, it cannot be an annual exercise at year-end. It must be addressed at reasonably frequent intervals—but it does not have to be a laborious task dependent on sophisticated PE tools. Not every organization has the budget of a Fortune 500 company, but any manager can engage in a productive PE process by ensuring that he/she helps their team identify their edges based on these five simple questions:

Are you a

• Clear Thinker, who navigates through the noise and focus on priorities
• Strategic visionary, who brings new ideas and a direction to the table
• Execution focused, who exhibits a high say/do ratio
• Resourceful, who tackles obstacles and figure out ways to get things done
• Data-driven, who makes decisions based on facts

Each quarter evaluation (not to take more than 10 minutes per person) should be conducted in a 360 format by two peers plus two members outside your team. You want your team to know what their edges are and ask them to sharpen them more while asking them to leverage someone else to manage their blind spots. What you are seeking is a cohesive whole that works together like a complete jigsaw puzzle. You don’t need all strategic thinkers and no execution people; you don’t need all execution people running around like chickens with their heads cut-off with no strategic vision to guide them. You don’t need each individual bogged down by data.

Having sharp edges (passion) that drives a team member to excel in an area, even if that person exhibits weakness in another area, should not be considered a negative. The question is, how is that individual leveraging other team members with those specific skills to complement their areas of need? And as a manager, how are you leveraging your team members to maximize everyone’s strengths? If we all have round edges, we may sit next to each other, but like my daughter’s puzzle pieces, we will never connect and be stable, and we will never complete the picture.

Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author, and not to the author's employer, organization, committee or other group or individual.

Author: Nayeem Sayed