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.
