Do performance appraisals and systems thinking sit comfortably together?

K

Keely

#1
I would firstly like to say thank you to the Cove. My Section has recently achieved ISO9001 certification in no small part to the information I've found here and taken away and applied.

My company is now looking to introduce a new performance appraisal system. To me, a performance appraisal system should be one that helps team members understand what is required of them and gives them a way of knowing when they have achieved it, not one that gives people a score for things like communication skills or punctuality.

If the former is the type of performance appraisal system that we adopt, this also causes me concern. The thought of holding individuals responsible for achievement of objectives seems to fly in the face of systems thinking where the process should be engineered to achieve the objectives, not individuals. It also doesn't seem to fit with Deming teachings. Am I seeing this the right way? If this is the case I would be very interested to hear how other companies have balanced performance appraisals with the process delivering objectives.

I look forward to your thoughts. :thanx:
 
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Wes Bucey

Quite Involved in Discussions
#2
Keely said:
I would firstly like to say thank you to the Cove. My Section has recently achieved ISO9001 certification in no small part to the information I've found here and taken away and applied.

My company is now looking to introduce a new performance appraisal system. To me, a performance appraisal system should be one that helps team members understand what is required of them and gives them a way of knowing when they have achieved it, not one that gives people a score for things like communication skills or punctuality.

If the former is the type of performance appraisal system that we adopt, this also causes me concern. The thought of holding individuals responsible for achievement of objectives seems to fly in the face of systems thinking where the process should be engineered to achieve the objectives, not individuals. It also doesn't seem to fit with Deming teachings. Am I seeing this the right way? If this is the case I would be very interested to hear how other companies have balanced performance appraisals with the process delivering objectives.

I look forward to your thoughts. :thanx:
Welcome to the Cove, Keely!:bigwave:

I sympathize with your concern.

Have the managers with this plan explained how the workers will benefit under this plan? What is the benefit for the organization?

In my personal experience, I have never seen an individual performance system which was truly "fair." Close examination of almost any such plan at any organization will uncover built-in biases. Almost always, the biases end up measuring some attribute or characteristic which is completely beyond the control of the individual (similar to Deming's Red Beads.) The worst biases of all are those which measure attributes and characteristics which have absolutely nothing to do with production of the product or service and almost everything to do with some prejudice of the boss.

As examples of completely unfair performance appraisal factors, I cite some I have seen or overheard in the last six months:
  1. an organization downgrades employees who do not contribute money and volunteer service to the owner's pet charity.
  2. an organization arbitrarily terminates the bottom ten percent ranked employees
  3. an organization downgrades employees who do not put in "volunteer hours" after they clock out
  4. I overheard a guy in a cocktail lounge [who had been overserved] detailing the slimy way he and his fellow executives kept "uppity N-word" folk in line by keeping their job appraisals at borderline. I gathered he was trying to woo some woman by telling how "powerful" he was.
  5. An organization penalizes employees for speaking any language other than English on the premises, regardless if they have customer contact or not. I asked, "How do you deal with non-English speaking customers?" The reply, "We don't have any!" I regret I didn't follow up with, "And why do you suppose you don't have any non-English speaking customers?" My thought at the time was, "This jerk doesn't deserve any free tips!"
 
J
#3
Nothing is perfect.

I'm happy you brought this up as we are going to be reviewing our performance review/apprasial system soon as well.

Your concern is whether the apprasial system can be fair and unbiased, and how it can be justified in a systems thinking environment.

One statement in particular caught my attention. You state, "The thought of holding individuals responsible for achievement of objectives seems to fly in the face of systems thinking where the process should be engineered to achieve the objectives, not individuals."

If personnel are a component of the process to be acheived then they need to be measured as a part of the process. IMHO, the human element may be the most critical item to measure. (depending on the process of course)

In order for a process to perform as engineered, it must be repeatable. Repeatability depends on the reliability of the components of the system. Non-human components will function as designed (most of the time) as long as it is properly installed, programmed and maintained. The human components, on the other hand, may or may not function up to snuff depending on a host of factors not necessarily related to the process itself. (sometimes you just have a bad day)

I look at it this way. Employees must function a certain way in order for the process to perform as planned. Self-Discipline and responsibility are the two human factors needed to gain the desired repeatability. Where humans are not held accountable performance suffers. Humans also require feedback as to how they are performing. Think of it as preventive maintenance.

Can there be a system for performance evaluation that is entirely free of bias? I would doubt it, but lets keep in mind that old adage. If you can't measure it you can't control it. Try to keep in mind that you are trying to measure a component of the system (or process) and hopefully that will keep you on track.

I apologize for the rambling, Early Sunday is not my best time.

James
 

Jim Wynne

Staff member
Admin
#4
If it can't be measured, don't try

Welcome to the Cove!
I'm going to pull quotes from the two responses posted at this point and then offer my own opinion, and an illustration:

JRKH said:
...lets keep in mind that old adage. If you can't measure it you can't control it.
Wes Bucey said:
Almost always, [we] end up measuring some attribute or characteristic which is completely beyond the control of the individual (similar to Deming's Red Beads.)
IMO, the first quote captures one of the most harmful myths of quality improvement, and the second shows why it's harmful. When we try to quantify things that can't be quantified objectively, fear and loathing are the inevitable results. Measuring human performance is not an exercise for amateurs, and even in the realm of "experts" the science is fraught with controversy and conflicting "evidence." My own opinion is that in manufacturing, exemplary human performance should be mostly transparent. If we design efficacious processes, it must be assumed that the human component will represent common skills and aptitude. Outstandingly poor performance will be readily detectable, and unusually good performance is a sign that the expectations have probably been set too low, or that a person and position have been mismatched. If the process output is at the expected level, neither extreme of human performance is necessary, and you don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.

Back when I worked for Dilbert's boss, I was supervising an inspection department in an electronics manufacturing operation. There was a circuit board inspector who was perfectly matched to the job. She was good at it--able to spot a cold solder joint or backwards diode from across the street--she liked her work, and wasn't affected in the least by the monotony of it. She got along well with coworkers, her output was timely and accurate, and she was able to deal effectively and diplomatically with the people whose work she was inspecting. In short, the ideal human element for the process at hand.

I gave her her first annual appraisal (after I had been hired) and it reflected my appreciation for her efforts, my thankfulness that she required little or no supervision, and my general gratitude for her presence. I sent the appraisal paperwork upstairs to my boss for his approval, and he called me to his office the next day to talk about it. "This appraisal for Sally is no good," he said, "there are no 'needs improvement' items." I patiently explained that there were no areas where improvement was needed, and that Sally was performing exactly as desired. The boss, who apparently had just gotten finished reading a management book (or more likely, someone had read one to him) said, "Everyone can always improve something, and it's your job as a supervisor to help people to improve."
"But," I said, "sometimes the best help you can give people is to leave them alone and let them do their jobs." He was having none of it; his personal rule was that all employee appraisals must include objectives for improvement. Thus I was forced to invent something and explain to the employee why I had to do it.

If the process is performing as expected (i.e., it has been optimized) then messing around with it will lead to trouble. If the process is not performing as expected, the chances are great that the sob-optimum performance is due, as Wes (and Deming) said, to issues beyond the control of the operators. When employee performance adversely affects an optimized process, there's no need for appraisals to identify the problem. In short, traditional employee performance appraisals are usually at best a waste of time.
 

Jen Kirley

Quality and Auditing Expert
Staff member
Admin
#5
Welcome to the Cove, Keely! :bigwave:

Excellent input here on a critically misunderstood procedure. It is such good commentary that I have little to add (gasp!) except I want to warn against ever, ever ever evaluating an employee without starting him or her off in his or her job with a complete set of expectations--ideally, let him or her have a copy of the evaluation so (s)he can know what criteria (s)he will eventually be evaluated against. It's simple enough and the least we can do, yet I have never seen it in action. Indeed, most often I have had to grope my way through my job, either receiving an hour-long verbal walk-through or not...usually I eventually wrote work instructions for the job because there wasn't even that--sigh.

Doing performance evaluation is dreadfully hard because by the time it goes down on paper, half a year or more of work has gone by and the evaluator makes these comments on what ends up to be memory and judgement. Some of us are far better at this than others. Worse, many supervisory and management personnel use it as a reason to avoid making the effort to evaluate more frequently--to tell the associates what they want, what is going well or not--they just get caught up in a daily stream of productivity and six months go by...oh! Time to do those evals. No wonder almost everyone I know of hates doing them and receiving them. I always have.

I have one idea for the "opportunity for improvement" issue: can the person be invited to input a goal, perhaps taking a class to become better trained in this subject or that, maybe not even directly work related? My evals include such a line item, which might satisfy those management types who think there is no such thing as a really top-rate employee.

I think it is time for me to write an article on this subject, which will be interesting because the Deminguite in me shrinks from the notion but it is so important to managers that there ought to be a better set of tools than they now have--for whomever cares to use them.
 

Jim Wynne

Staff member
Admin
#6
Jennifer Kirley said:
I have one idea for the "opportunity for improvement" issue: can the person be invited to input a goal, perhaps taking a class to become better trained in this subject or that, maybe not even directly work related? My evals include such a line item, which might satisfy those management types who think there is no such thing as a really top-rate employee.
Why support destructive thinking by creating irrelevant goals? My strategy in these instances (beginning with the one I related above) is to make something up that resembles an improvement effort, but causes no unnecessary extra effort for anyone. The idiots who insist on improvement when none is needed will invariably accept whatever is proposed so long as it's appropriately obtuse and includes a few gratuitous buzzwords. Remember--these people are looking for placeholders, not actual helpful ideas. Give them what they want, and nothing more.
 

Steve Prevette

Deming Disciple
Staff member
Super Moderator
#7
Many good thoughts already. I would suggest that Alfie Kohn has some of the most passionate writings against performance appraisals - see http://www.alfiekohn.org

Even if I had a "perfectly fair" appraisal system that accurately rated and ranked the employees, it is still suggested that this can be harmful. You are dooming half of your employees to failure - to being below average. Also, does this information really help you employees? A good argument I have heard is that we grade fruit. Bruised fruit is still useful - we use if for juice. Perfect looking fruit is sold as whole fruit. But does such sorting and classifying really work for humans?

As a closing thought - do you give your wife/husband and children performance appraisals? If it is so good for corporations, why isn't even more important for our families? Don't your children need a "communications score"? Was your spouse above or below average last year? Can you imagine the results? Well, the same thing happens at the workplace.
 

Jen Kirley

Quality and Auditing Expert
Staff member
Admin
#8
JSW05 said:
Why support destructive thinking by creating irrelevant goals? My strategy in these instances (beginning with the one I related above) is to make something up that resembles an improvement effort, but causes no unnecessary extra effort for anyone. The idiots who insist on improvement when none is needed will invariably accept whatever is proposed so long as it's appropriately obtuse and includes a few gratuitous buzzwords. Remember--these people are looking for placeholders, not actual helpful ideas. Give them what they want, and nothing more.
Please excuse me, why do you assume the goal is irrelevant? Do you think it's possible the inspector (she sounded awesome) might have a goal--perhaps to pursue some education in this or that--that would have worked? Did you ask her?
 

Jim Wynne

Staff member
Admin
#9
Jennifer Kirley said:
Please excuse me, why do you assume the goal is irrelevant? Do you think it's possible the inspector (she sounded awesome) might have a goal--perhaps to pursue some education in this or that--that would have worked? Did you ask her?
"maybe not even directly work related"
Your words, Jennifer. No offense intended, but what you suggest is exactly what the clueless boss was demanding. Think of something--anything--that's even remotely "improvement" related and make it a goal. Not because improvement is needed, but because there's a blank on the appraisal form for it. The woman in question was happy with what she was doing and predictably felt offended at the suggestion that we had to strain to think of something that needed improvement. And she wasn't "awesome." That's the whole point--she consistently did exactly what was expected. The fact that so many people don't reach that level of performance is a signal that something is seriously wrong with the system. People need processes that work, and a clear understanding of their roles in making them work.
I might have mentioned it here before, but the single best compliment I ever received from someone who worked for me was when I was told, during a performance appraisal, "I like working for you because you let me do my job." People need to be allowed to do their jobs, and be free from micromanagers who believe everything will go to h#ll if they're not constantly managing something, or trying to measure something that can't be measured, or creating useless, irrelevant objectives.
 

Steve Prevette

Deming Disciple
Staff member
Super Moderator
#10
An observation: The thread's original question was Do performance appraisals and systems thinking sit comfortably together? I would say, based upon the thoughts here, and the writings of folks involved with systems thinking that the answer is "no".

Now, we can also gravitate off on a thread of "How do systems thinkers deal with their employee appraisals"? I would say that I have learned the "game" of how to write my own appraisal and goals. However, I have more than ample personal evidence that the decision as to how much of a pay raise you are going to get, or whether or not you are going to be laid off, has nothing to do with the words on the appraisal, or your written goals from the previous year.

I would say that "Branding" (such as every -good- chart that I make has my name in the footer), publishing in open literature and a monthly report that I supply my managers has much more impact than the annual performance appraisal. Last year, I "exceeded expectations" (a great phrase). That meant that my raise was to be twice the average raise (another formula someone came up with). No, I did not turn down the raise :rolleyes:

I gave my input to my team lead. However, a big stink came up that "team leads couldn't do appraisals". I assumed however that he forwarded my input to his manager. Nope. One day before my manager was to do my appraisal, he asked if I had turned in any input. I sent mine to him. The next morning, at the meeting, he again asked if I turned in any input. We went and pulled it out of his email. He then asked if my appraisal was based upon last year's goals. I said "heck no, what goals? I never got a signed copy of last year's appraisal (I had transferred groups) and I had not established "goals". He then said "boy, you sure respect this process". He then asked if he could modify my input (now that's an odd question). Later that day, he sent me the modified final appraisal, and I was rated "exceeds expectations". I later found out that this decision had been made by his boss about two months prior to this.

This year I again "exceeded expectations". And no, I didn't make much progress on the two stated goals from the previous year, and they wanted to keep the appraisals short and so we used a "short form".

Of course, why should I look the "gift horse in the mouth?" :cfingers: No complaints, nope, nope, nope. . .
 
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