“You decide,” I said. “You decide what you want to improve on.”
The class had just completed a survey, looking at strengths and weaknesses.
“You decide, if you would like to focus on and improve an area of weakness. Or you may decide to focus on and improve an area of strength.
“Correcting a weakness only creates a mediocre performance. Building on a strength creates mastery. You decide what you want to improve upon.” -TF
“I don’t think it’s me,” Marion repeated.
“You are angry at the person who gave you the negative feedback and you would like to ignore the feedback,” I confirmed.
“Besides, even it were true about me, I can’t change, that’s just not me. I couldn’t do it. Out of the question. I don’t see how anyone could do that.”
I looked at Marion. Without a word. Silence.
“But if you could change, what would you do first?” I asked. -TF
Marion’s bottom lip protruded. If she was eleven years old, I would have sworn she was pouting.
“I think I know who said that,” she announced.
“Is it important?” I asked.
“Well, I think they have a chip on their shoulder and this evaluation was just a chance to vent, to make me look bad.”
“Marion, there are positive things in this evaluation, and there are negative things here. You like the positive stuff, but you don’t believe the negative stuff.”
“Well, I think this person has an agenda. I don’t think it’s me,” she continued to protest.
“Do you think that is part of the problem?” -TF
“I try not to think about them,” Gene continued. “We have fifty trucks, they have six trucks in this market. Worse part, they are taking work for way less than us. Sometimes, I think they aren’t here to make money. I think they are here just to make us look like bad guys.”
“So, they are taking work at a lower price to the customer?” I asked.
“Yeah, sometimes, it’s lower than what it costs me. They are buying the work.”
“Let’s look at a couple of things, Gene. First, they don’t have an office over here?”
“No.”
“They don’t have an office over here, so they are using their dispatch people in their home office, using Google maps or something. They are billing people using either credit cards or invoicing from their home office, sending the invoice by fax, email or snail mail.
“They aren’t competing in the Yellow Pages, only on the internet, so their hard advertising costs are less. Gene, I don’t think they are working on a lower margin than you. I think they have figured out a lower cost structure. In fact, even with a lower price to the customer, they may be making more money than you.” -TF
“So, it’s important to be Number One or Number Two in our market. I get that. Third or Fourth place just creates a target. Can we use geography to narrow our market definition? I mean, as a local supplier, we have an advantage. We can honestly say that we are Number One in our local market,” Gene explained.
“Yes, if your market is truly a local market. But, Gene, I gotta tell you, I have seen some trucks rolling around town from a new competitor I haven’t seen before,” I replied.
“Yeah, I know who they are. Their headquarters are on the other side of the state. They don’t do any local advertising. I think they are depending on the internet to get their leads. They show up pretty heavy in search engines. But, still, they’re from out of town.”
“Gene, I visited their yard. They don’t have an office, but they have six trucks in your local market.” -TF
“Yes, we have a couple of competitors, big competitors, but they pretty much leave us alone. We’re much too small in the market to be more than a thorn in their side,” Gene explained.
“So, as the overall market contracts and the Top Competitors’ revenues get pinched, where do you think they will go, to hold on to market share,” I asked.
“Well, we always hope they will fight with each other,” Gene continued.
“Why would the Top Competitor in the market fight with Number Two when they can just come in and take out Number Four or Number Five?”
Gene sat up in his chair, suddenly uncomfortable. “Well, Number Four would be us. And they have always left us alone. After all, we just pick up the crumbs that fall off of their cake. Why would the Top Dog want to come after us?”
“Why would the Top Competitor want to spend a lot of money, energy and resources fighting with Number Two, when they can take your customers without a whimper?” I asked again.
I could see Gene’s eyes tracing this chess game in his mind. “Look, Gene,” I continued. “In any market, when times are good, it’s easy to be Number Four, living off the crumbs. But, when the market gets tight, the only place to be is Number One or Number Two. Number Three and Number Four will have their heads handed to them.” -TF
It’s been a great week with a number of comments posted about Performance Appraisals. My bias is, absolutely, it is the responsibility of the Manager to make judgments about the effectiveness of each team member.
Many of my clients have found a 360 degree approach helpful, so much so, that we were asked to create a web-based application to ensure confidentiality. It allows for perspectives from multiple points of view and provides a platform for a very frank discussion. Here’s the way it works.
I usually allow the subject to select approximately fifty percent of the respondents to the survey, then as the Manager, I backfill the other fifty percent of respondents.
Once the surveys are collected and confidentially compiled by the website, I print a copy for subject and schedule the conversation. I use a highlighter to mark comments that are similar from one respondent to the next. An isolated observation may not mean much, but two similar comments get my attention and three or more similar comments might mark a trend.
Then we talk. At the conclusion of our conversation, I ask the subject to write up three things they commit to start doing and three things they commit to stop doing.
If you would like to see how this works for your team, you can try one out at the following link.
“Our company has adopted something called Management by Objectives. MBO they call it,” Sara reported.
“And why did your company adopt that strategy?” I asked.
“There were some who said that our appraisal system was too subjective, that it needed to be measurable. So everyone had to sit down and make up some objectives.”
“And why do you think your company made that decision?”
“Some of the managers were uncomfortable making judgments about a team member’s performance. There were squabbles, disagreements and the whole thing turned into a big distraction.”
“And how is MBO working out for you?”
“Well, it has just as many downsides as the old system,” Sara replied. “Some people get so focused on their own Objectives, they forget about the other people they work with. Cooperation gets stopped dead in its tracks. And sometimes the Objectives are not really in the control of the team member. We seem to spend more time talking about how unfair the system is than we do about improving individual effectiveness.”
“So, what makes you most unhappy about the performance appraisal process?” I asked.
Ben winced, “I really hate the whole process. It’s like my Manager gets to play God for a day and make a singular judgment about my value as a person. In many cases, he’s not in a position to really observe my behavior, and sometimes, he just comes up with the wrong conclusion. He just doesn’t have all the facts.”
“So, sometimes, your Manager is just plain wrong?”
“I have never really said it that way, but, in a nutshell that’s it.”
“Has your Manager ever tried to get your side of the story?”
Ben sat back, up straight. “You know, yes, he did, but it was almost underhanded. He came up with this self evaluation form, where I had to evaluate my own performance.”
“That sounds like a good idea, but I gather you’re not too wild about the result?”
“You’re not kidding. Here’s what he said. If I put something down and he agreed with it, then we didn’t need to talk about it. But if I put something down and he didn’t agree, then he would tell me where I was wrong. It’s almost like I was tricked into going first.”
“What do you hate about performance appraisals?” I asked, gazing into a classroom full of rolling eyes. The snickers and muffled laughter hinted that I struck a chord.
Each table created responses that sounded like these:
If you are a regular reader of Dilbert, you can come up with another hundred observations. The reason they are funny is that they most accurately describe the truth.
So, if we were to create an appraisal system that addresses these issues, what elements would we include? -TF