A few years ago, I was assigned the worst secretarial assistant I’ve ever had. A colleague I confided in gave me some surprising advice: “Her performance review is coming up. Give her the highest possible rating.”
“Why would I do that?” I asked naÏvely. “It’s the fastest way to get her invited to work in another division,” she said.
I’m ashamed to admit that I followed her advice and, sure enough, the secretary was snatched up by a manager in another department. Evidently this kind of dysfunctional behavior is not uncommon.
In fact, there’s a good deal of system-gaming that goes on in performance reviews. A CEO I know noticed that managers often gave employees average ratings but later requested raises for them.
He discovered that the managers were giving valuable employees a low rating so they wouldn’t get picked off.
Such behavior can hurt a company. All those low-ranked but highly valued employees were at risk of jumping to a competitor.
No surprise, then, that many companies are reexamining their performance-management processes. For instance, the consulting firm Deloitte now asks managers to answer four forward-looking questions (paraphrased here):
n If it were your money, would you pay this person more?
n Would you want to always keep this person in your team?
n Is this person ready for promotion? Yes or no?
n Is this person at risk of under-performing? Yes or no?
Those questions should help managers develop ownership of their decisions and the consequences.
But I’d like to raise another question: If performance management systems are so often ignored or gamed, do we really know how well we’re managing talent? How many good people are being held back by bad managers? In most organizations, the only way people can show their dissatisfaction with a manager is by leaving the department or the company.
CEOs must hold managers accountable if they abuse performance-management systems (as imperfect as those systems may be). They must be rewarded for using the system to recognize and retain future leaders, and for sending incompetent employees on their way. Alfredo Behrens
- Alfredo Behrens is professor of global leadership at Faculdade FIA de Administração e Negócios in São Paulo. His latest book is Shooting Heroes and Rewarding Cowards.