Paul Falcone - The Performance Appraisal Tool Kit: Redesigning Your Performance Review Template to Drive Individual and Organizational Change

Contents

The sample templates and material in the appendixes can be accessed online and downloaded to your computer from www.amacombooks.org/go/PerformanceAppraisal.

THERES HISTORICALLY much controversy surrounding the topic of performance reviews, and its time to take a fresh look at reinventing the entire processfrom the appraisal template to the content descriptors that set the measurement barin order to initiate positive organizational and cultural change within your company. Performance appraisal as a whole must be relevant to everyonethose being evaluated, those doing the evaluations, and those senior leaders who look to the performance management system to gain a better understanding of how their people are performing year after year. Its time to make performance management and measurement concrete and actionable. The system needs to get right to the bottom line and remain very transparent in terms of its format, structure, and intent. And it needs to focus on positive, transformative, and breakthrough performance not only to assess but also to drive corporate and individual change. Despite what you may have heard or have come to believe, these are all possible through the performance review, and were writing this book to make it easy for you to accomplish. Its actually a lot simpler than you think

Remember that the people muscle of any organization will always be its most critical asset in a knowledge-based economy, so companies that speak performance, that know how to measure and manage that particular asset will, by definition, set themselves apart from their competition.

Is measuring human capital difficult? Yes. Does it depend on a whole number of variables and assumptions? Of course. Will it always be subject to criticism and a certain level of dissatisfaction. Absolutely! But thats because were human beings measuring and evaluating other human beings, so the system will never beand isnt meant to beperfect. It does, however, have to become part of your organizations daily lexicon, and there are some simple yet profound ways of rolling out this message, measuring results, and building an achievement-oriented culture where workers are able to motivate themselves in the light of the wisdom and expectations that emanate from the top.

Traditionally, performance evaluations generate responses like this: I always hate this time of year. Doing performance reviews is such a time waster and a drag. No one really pays any attention to them anyhow, and you go through all that work just to have your bosses check off some boxes showing their generic perceptions of your strengths and weaknesses, all so that they could justify giving you a minuscule merit increase. I wish theyd just give us the equivalent of a cost-of-living adjustment and allow us to skip all of this nonsense. Ive got real work to do!

That view is fairly well distributed among workers in corporate America, and front-line managers have similar feelings: Oh no, its that time again. This is such baloneyId rather stick needles in my eye than have to hold one-on-one meetings with my employees and tell them how theyre doing (which they already know since I give them daily feedback anyway). I have to fill out those evaluation forms, which I end up completing the same way for everyone on my team because theyre all basically doing the same job. And then you go through all that, only to see the person get a whopping 3 percent raise at the end of the day. Why doesnt someone finally just abolish performance appraisals altogether and take us out of our misery?

Sadly, senior leadership also sees little strategic value in the exercise. Annual performance reviews become a check-off exercise ritual to justify giving merit increases to employees and little more. The forms themselves return to employees personnel files immediately afterward, never to see the light of day again, and little if any organizational knowledge or value that can be used to steer the ship in a new direction or realign it in light of the economys newest challenges percolates up to the executive team.