Dispute your boss and his pitiful annual appraisal in HR using Lean tools and get promoted - my memoire

The annual performance appraisal: A lose-lose scenario

I don't think there is anything more damaging and demoralising that a company can do than to explain to a high performing individual after a long hard year of dedication that although she deserves a merit-based reward (e.g. promotion, bonus, etc.), she will not be getting it due to some half-baked administrative bureaucratic rule that even the CEO himself wouldn't be able explain clearly.

I am speaking about the various levers, or better stated EXCUSES that corporations use during the once-a-year performance appraisal process aimed at avoiding the recognition and reward of the contributions made by their high performers.

To name a few, such levers come in the form of promotion freezes, budget restraints, and what I believe to be the most demoralising of all; the bell curve grading scale which in most cases is rarely explained to the employee and guarantees that the supervisor will end the year going out of his way to magnify the employee's faults while discounting or even eliminating the strengths.

Having worked in large organisations for 17 years, I have seen directly and indirectly all of these less-than-brilliant and often cowardly techniques in action including once witnessing a promotion that was given to a fellow colleague but quickly taken back due to a 'budget miscalculation' by an SVP.

For employees who expect a merit-based reward system from their employer, anything less will often damage their relationship with their manager. The employee will feel humiliated and spoken down to as the manager puts focus on bad news and negativity in a fragile moment that should be dedicated to building confidence and celebrating success.

This post is dedicated to the hardships an employee endures when accepting a system that isn't effective in recognising true contribution and one of the key methodologies I have used over the years to go about changing this system.

We regret to inform you but.......

1. The bell curve

"You did a great job this year and went above and beyond in hitting your targets. Unfortunately, this year we can only reward 5% of the people in this company and you are not one of them."

If you are lucky to have a supervisor who is genuine and honest, that is the version you will hear.

In most cases however, if your supervisor is a true 'Company Man/Woman', this unfortunate situation will not be revealed to you. Instead you will spend most of your annual review hearing justification why your performance was no better than your supervisor's perception of 'average'.

To add insult to injury, you will most likely spend the discussion zooming in on what your supervisor deems to have been your pitfalls making reference to minor events which took place over the course of the past few weeks as it is still fresh in his mind while hearing absolutely nothing about the 50 hour work weeks you dedicated 6 months ago to help the company out of a major crisis situation.

All of this heartache merely to justify on paper why your performance evaluation lies in the centre of the bell's curve or in other words, why you did not exceed an 'average' performance rating.

2. The promotion freeze

"You definitely would have got promoted this year as I (the supervisor) was pushing for it but unfortunately the company is not in a position to support it."

A classic used when the company finds itself in an organisational crisis due to the difficulty in setting challenging measurable objectives among the staff and as a result has a major misalignment between the roles needed and the people who are performing them.

3. Budget restraints

"Share prices and earning are not at the levels which Senior Management anticipated. Be happy you have a job and try to stay out of the cost-cutting cross fire."

This is when things are at an all-time low and management has no shame in lowering its integrity to get through year end as quick as possible. Bad news is delivered and you are bullied into accepting it.

I once went to lunch with a colleague who had been a true high performer for several years supporting her team managed by a VP responsible for PMO governance across our office. She had recently had her annual review and as a result broke into tears during our lunch. A few months later she gave her resignation. Prior to leaving she was invited into a one-on-one meeting with the Managing Director himself who recognised her value to the company and offered her another role in another department but by that time it was too late. Another bank had already offered her a very attractive opportunity in their office in downtown Milan.

The underlying theme in all of these equally repugnant situations which cause immense disappointment to any patient employee who has waited all year to receive a pat on the back lies in the creating of unnecessary confusion and then shifting the blame of this confusion to someone that is neither is the room during the appraisal discussion nor can be accessible for further follow-up.

Fight back with Lean

How I used Lean methodologies to challenge the system and get a big promotion

In my last years in the corporate world I put Senior Management to the test by challenging this model while unintentionally giving myself the reputation of a borderline whistle blower.

In doing so, I lost a few allies and learnt the hard way that there are still major bottlenecks in this archaic system that are forcing great leaders to accept mediocrity, to be less transparent with their employees, and often jump ship. All of this, not to mention the many high performing individuals who work under these conditions continuously feeling undervalued and will also change companies at the first available opportunity.

I'll see you in HR

In my last year as a 'corporate soldier', I refused to accept my supervisor's annual performance appraisal rating and filed a complaint against him with HR.

It was the result of a 3-year build up of tension from hearing all the excuses listed above over-and-over again. Throughout the course of our relationship, I had communicated each year that I was not satisfied with my rating making each annual review process, more tense and uncomfortable as the years went on.

In the final weeks of our last year together, he became very aggressive with me creating unecessary and highly visible confrontations prior to my annual review. Looking back, this unecessary conflict he created was most likely due to the fact that he knew I had outdid myself throughout the course of the year exceeding my targets working many late nights and weekends in the office and wanted to set the stage to justify delivering bad news during the annual appraisal by bringing the tone down from the key milestones and high performance I had achieved throughout the year.

The story is very complicated and overloaded with excessive bureaucratic details of what happened during the complaint process and the local implications that were required to resolve the very costly dispute. In the end both myself and my supervisor endured a heavy scolding from the MD.

One positive thing that emerged from the situation was that I was separated indefinitely from my supervisor and was immediately given charge of a talent innovation project to launch together with the Director of HR himself and supported by the Learning and Development Team. Two areas of the business I previously had never worked with.

It turned out that the HR office in their own way gave me kudos for the way in which I effectively communicated not only WHY my performance rating was undervalued by my supervisor but also in HOW I was quite convincing in explaining why our supervisor was not fit for his role in supporting our team.

My technique; the Lean Skills Matrix (aka Competency wheel) which I used to highlight where my complementary skills supported our team in critical moments and where my supervisor's lack of know-how in areas of technology and leadership created unnecessary friction and confusion among the team when we needed him most.

This was the HR team's first real introduction to seeing Lean in action and I was delighted to be part of the landmark moment and even more delighted to be recognised for my effort.

The shocking turn of events

What happened next shocked me as I was tasked to use the same methodology I had used to file a complaint against my supervisor this time to measure the competency levels of our 10-person tax processing team.

Prior to kick-off, I received a confidential document reserved for senior management containing the corporate skill development vision and the key talent differentiators which the company headquarters had been investing in for several years to structure and implement its global talent enrichment and knowledge retention strategy. I was asked to consider this in our proof-of-concept test pilot about to be launched with the accounting team.

To launch this project locally we built a software prototype which allowed us to implement the Lean Skills Matrix in a pilot team of 10 highly skilled investment fund tax accountants.

The result: A major success as HR and L&D both acknowledged a first-of-its-kind system offering real-time transparency into where complementary skills sets could be leveraged to close knowledge gaps among the staff.

Furthermore, it was a pleasant surprise when we saw the sparks of what appeared to be a cultural shift in the way the team leaders started to address training issues more proactively through the real-time mandate the software and it's methodology offered them.

All of this, in just a few short months!

Use software to do away with the annual review once and for all

As Taiichi Ohno would insist, it is not the person who creates conflict in a company but a bad process that brings out the worst in the person. That said, I do not accuse my old supervisor of being a bad person, just a bad manager trying to manage a bad process.

Time and time again, the annual performance appraisal continues to fail companies worldwide. It substitutes itself for that system that any company who seeks to remain competitive requires to allow for knowledge gaps and training issues to be readily visible and managed in real time. It also dissuades employees to challenge the status quo and try new things that will bring innovation for any minor fail could become a penaly on your end-of-year scorecard.

On a greater scale it impedes managers from taking a coach and/or mentor approach in managing daily operational challenges with their staff confining them to close themselves in their offices in an attempt to avoid encountering uncomfortable contribution and recognition-oriented discussions.

My discomforts in the corporate world around this topic led to my exit in 2015 and co-founding of TOPP Tactical Intelligence, an operational excellence SaaS provider specialised in performance governance and enhancement.

Together with my wonderful colleagues, over the years we have harnessed our lessons learnt from the pitfalls endured in the field allowing us to create, test, and implement software solutions which offer transparency, process-oriented continuous improvements, and real-time recognition celebration to our users group.

Such benefits as you would imagine are all part of the core principles offered in the Lean toolkit.

In 2017 we launched PRESTO Talent Manager, a one-of-a-kind talent enhancement collaboration platform which among many of its features includes the usage of the Lean Skills Matrix to manage day-to-day performance, increase knowledge retention and transform team leaders into coaches through transparency and pure organic skill cultivation.

Inspired by my days challenging my supervisor and it's proof-of-concept on the 10-person tax accounting team, PRESTO has since made great headway in Europe, the UAE, and recently in the US as it is in constant development leveraging the feedback loop of our customers and overly talented network of consulting partners who are continuously dedicated to questioning the status quo on how performance in the workplace should be managed.

Human performance enhancement is a wonderful field and critical to companies of the future who wish to remain competitive. I invite those of you who take this topic seriously to please reach out and connect with myself and my team for we believe that the battle revolutionising the annual performance appraisal is a battle still yet to be won and every pebble thrown in pond will ripple great distances.

I am taking the moment to wish all a serene end-of-year and safe holiday season in good company. If you have the luxury to enjoy this without the taste of a bad performance appraisal still lingering in your mouth, even better!

Andrew Lenti

CEO, TOPP Tactical Intelligence

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