Developing Performance

As employees work harder and longer, some are facing a breaking point, even though many companies aren't paying attention.

This seems to be research reporting week for me. Following on the heels of SHRM/Globoforce research on the bottom-line ROI of employee recognition, is this research from Office Team: “Recognize Results: Drive Success through Employee Recognition.”

Sherry Turkle's essay in Sunday's New York Times, "The Flight From Conversation," raised several critical questions about how our desire to be connected via technology can also be a powerful mechanism for avoiding significant human contact. Turkle, a psychologist and professor at MIT, is no technophobe. 

It’s that time of year again! Formal evaluations provide a framework for discussing the overall work of an employee, and, in a way, are a representation of your effectiveness as a manager. Making things even more difficult is the fact that no one particularly likes the formal or informal performance review process—especially when raises, promotions, and job security are at stake. Here's how you can turn the evaluation process into a positive experience:

 
Who's really effective at the office?
To get a handle on that question, a handful of bosses are taking decision-making power out of the executive suite and asking employees to help identify—and reward—talent by experimenting with internal markets in which workers "invest" in co-workers' performance and ideas.
Coffee & Power, a San Francisco odd-jobs start-up, granted each of its 15 full- and part-time employees 1,200 stock options this past January, to distribute among co-workers in whatever way they chose. A worker can plunk all his options onto one colleague or split them among the group, so individual bonuses are tied to how co-workers perceive each other's work.

If you are a college football fan, you are familiar with ESPN Gameday, the live show filmed before big games. It’s like a traveling circus rolling from campus to campus. Excitement reaches a fever pitch as game time nears, with thousands of students in strange costumes and inconsistent levels of sobriety gathering around the stage of the hosts. The hosts have some routine shtick. Near kickoff, one of them, Kirk Herbstreit, delivers a serious thesis about who will win the game and why. It is always well-reasoned and founded on solid theory and observation of practice sessions. Then his partner Lee Corso responds with a refrain familiar to viewers: “Not so fast, my friend.” 

Established Companies Hope Interaction With Others Will Spark Collaboration
Taking a page from start-ups, some established companies are opting to share their workspaces.

Atul Gawande told a fascinating story yesterday at TED about some of the challenges facing healthcare in America. However, as he talked the implications for business and non-profit leaders became crystal clear to me.

 
I ran across an interesting Blog post this past weekend from Daniel Newman, on a site called MillennialCEO.com, entitled, “Death of Distance – Social Media & Collaboration.”
The post was a well-written piece on how ubiquitous social media and collaboration has become in our lives, and that distance is no longer defining the intimacy of relationships (at least from a knowledge-sharing perspective).

Executive coach Joel Garfinkle quotes Peter Drucker as noting that past ­leaders knew how to tell, while future leaders would know how to ask.
Here’s how Garfinkle advises asking others for feedback on your performance:

As many of you know, I have expressed considerable skepticism about whether performance evaluations are even worth using, if they do more good than harm.  And Sam Culbert has gone the next step with his book, Get Rid of the Performance Evaluation. 

Some successful companies have thrived off of making their employees compete against each other, giving many a manager the brilliant idea that they should try it at their own office. They should think twice before going down that road.

Thank God for Susan Robertson.
Susan is a friend and colleague, and a principal at the innovation firm Ideas To Go. I’m happy Susan took the time to respond to yet another article in a respected publication that downplays the value of collaboration in idea generation. I’ve written several pieces in this blogspace defending the value of well executed brainstorming, for once, somebody else wrote a rebuttal — and I’m so glad, thank you Susan!
I can’t resist adding an additional two cents.