Keep it simple honey!!

Keep it simple honey…

My days are generally busy and though I start quite early still squeezing out time for my favorite section of News Daily becomes next to impossible, courtesy my adorable son. Today was no different just that I managed to catch a glimpse of Times Ascent and came across this great article on performance management system based on an interview of Mr. Thomas J DeLong, professor at Harvard Business School.

As per the Professor an organization has three types of workers. A, those who exceed expectations, B who meet expectations and C are ones who are below expectations. Now I wish most of the organizations could keep it that crisp rather than further dividing it into some five to six categories, all because the managers are either not equipped or are not aware how to measure the expectation. This does nothing but in turn complicates the entire appraisal system and leads to confused employees with respect to their performance and even more stressed supervisors who spend months convincing them regarding the ratings they themselves never understood.

All this reminds me of BCG Matrix where Business units are categorized into Stars, Cash Cows, Dogs and Question Marks. Though it refers to a marketing lesson but same can be applied on Human assets where Stars are ‘A’ performer, ones who are future leaders and viewed as critical mass in an organization. Cash Cows are however the ‘B’ performers ones who are not just competent but most steady and reliable ones, infact just like cash cows they are ones who run the show and Dog are definitely the ‘C’ performers who are below expectation and should be either pushed toward being more productive or asked to exit from the system. Any organization should not hire question marks at all!!

We all know this but what lacks here is that mostly the focus is on A performers who are self driven and high on aspirations which if not satisfied internally would move out of system voluntarily, no matter what. After which, mostly we are concerned about C category and how can they be pumped to perform better. Now what we mostly ignore is the B category that works the best, balances work life with personal fronts and is extremely engaged to the organization. But ignoring this category raises unnecessary concerns which if not handled maturely and timely leads to exits from the block and ultimately affecting the profitability of the system.

Cutting the long story short, lesser categories will make life easier for all and not to mention will have more happy faces around.