A Theatre Called “Management”

Imagine walking into a theatre, and looking ahead at the stage where a bunch of people are performing different acts each unique in its own way and a group of executives sitting in the front row evaluating their performance.?

You start thinking about the act these individuals and some group of individuals are delivering and simultaneously thinking about what would be their evaluation?

Suddenly, your attention is interrupted by a tap on your shoulder, the show coordinator reminds you that you are next in 30 minutes. All your wandering thoughts from being a spectator goes to your performance. Anxious and reminding yourself of what all good you can do, you step onto the stage, deliver your act and moves back to stage waiting for the evaluation. ?

As the show concludes and performers gather to hear comments from the evaluation team. Some of them did exceedingly well and some were not so good. You were told that your performance was “satisfactory”. Basically you did what was expected and there was nothing innovative in your act so, possibly you should add some creativity to your performance”.?

Now, imagine as a scene of your work-place during performance evaluation aka ‘appraisal process’. The similarity with the theatrical act will be too hard to ignore.

The theatre is your work-place, the bunch of other people are your colleagues, the acts are your performance report being evaluated by Management Executives and the entire show representing the process of performance evaluation, ratings and normalizations with employees keen to know about the evaluation feedback.

The show of the coordinator is “the HR” who suddenly gained the second most important place in the office and everyone wants to renew their relationships with them instantly.

Many organizations still believe that performance management is all about evaluating, rating people, letting them know what went well/didn’t go and that should suffice the need for another 364/3 days (excluding the day you actually do it & leap year of course) and therefore should be given this much time only. Employees who can present their work are appraised better, the one’s who have learned the art of taking the credit gets the promotion and fawners are rated better are some of the common practices.

The evaluator biases, the human error, the recency effect, the wrong KPIs linked score, and the perception-based subjective evaluation are presumably some of the insignificant requirements, which are conveniently ignored due to various justifiable reasons and permissible time allotted to complete this activity. Fairness in the appraisal system is the talk of the town and it remains a talk to a larger extent.

How many times you are told that because you can manage things and are not allowing any problems to come to the surface, it is only satisfactory work done? Is someone in your organization is interested to know what it takes to just manage the task assigned to you? Well I leave this for you to find the answers!

The modern work dynamics, the hybrid model, the potential talent war and human element is urging us find a suitable upgrade in our methods when it comes to performance management. To see the potential gap effectively organizations needs a special E.Y.E.

This E.Y.E is an exercise I call “Evaluating Your Evaluation” and exercise which potentially can show the gaps in evaluation methodologies and the people who are responsible for evaluating in the organizations. As it is assumed that employees who are given the accountability to evaluate are proficient in understanding both human and work dynamics. Let’s begin with a notion that there is nothing wrong in the performance evaluation process and the evaluation methodology. However, to test the process, we can look at this once again with a different E.Y.E to potentially find some of these glaring gaps:

1.????The critical performance was overlooked because it seemed too ordinary.

2.????The performance was expected therefore nothing more was considered.

3.????The recent project success/failure impacted the rating.

4.????The necessity to maintain some balance or bell curve for a team.

5.????The extra hours given by an employee compared to someone haven’t.

6.????The problems were not highlighted but instead were solved at one’s level.

7.????The need to deliver was important than the need to impress others.

This list can be exhaustive and revealing too therefore, I leave it here for an individual discretion to add or delete some of the gaps mentioned.

Before we bring the curtains on this theatre here are some key points for the leaders to ponder:

1. Start with an end in mind as the fairness in the process can reap much larger benefits for an organization.
2. Challenge the status quo and be open about re-assessing, re-evaluating and re-considering the process to make it better than before.
3. Make sure both evaluators and the ones being evaluated are on the same page free from human and workplace biases.
4. Employees who are willing to make a difference are to be treated differently.

Evaluate and Evolve with an intent to be more Effective as an organization and to allow people to be more Engaged – MS