Imagine there are no 'A' Players; it's easy if you try

Peter Cappelli, Professor of Management at the Wharton School, delivered the closing keynote, 'Managing Performance in a Post-Recession Workspace' at the end of the first day of the Human Resource Executive Forum.

The presentation was equal parts entertaining, engaging, and challenging; in particular the preliminary results that Professor Cappelli shared around his analysis of the consistency of employee performance over time. 

Essentially the question that Cappelli's research aimed to answer was this?

How much does last year's performance appraisal tell you about what this year's will be?

Here is the basic methodology - obtain the performance review scores and results over a period of years from a large, established organization, thousands of performance reviews, and examine these reviews and scores to see if there is consistency and predicability in individual's performance reviews over time.

So back to the question - How much does last year's performance appraisal tell you about what this year's will be?

If you are like most of the audience, I'll bet you'd say that last year's review would tell you quite a bit about this year's review, most of the attendees felt like about 75% of the time performance results would remain predictive and consistent; i.e., last year's best performers would almost certainly be this year's best performers, and middle of the road performers tend to plod along year after year.

But according to the research, Cappelli indicated that only 25% of this year's performance review could be predicted from last year's results. The data set suggests that performance fluctuates much more widely over time that we tend to believe, and that he has found no evidence to indicate otherwise.

Cappelli elaborated on the implications of these findings, offering a series of smart, common-sense approaches to managing performance that would, if skillfully implemented, tend to improve performance over time, particularly performance for so-called 'troubled employees'.

But the most interesting observation was this - if performance does indeed vary widely over time, the entire idea of 'A' players and 'B' and 'C' players is overblown, if perhaps almost irrelevant.

If the data suggest that this year's top performers, those 'A' players that we constantly talk about, turn over every rock in the recuiting process to uncover, attempt to nurture and coach up through our organizations with 'special status' and development plans, might only be 25% of next year's 'A' players, well then, the entire notion of 'A' players doesn't make any sense at all.

If performance is highly variable, highly situational, and difficult to predict based on prior year data, then what does that mean for talent and performance management?

Is recruiting 'A' players highly overrated?

Are there really 'A' players and 'C' players?

What do you think?

Winning Time

Here's a shocker - I am a huge NBA, and specifically a New York Knicks fan. Once, back in the day I got asked to leave a sports bar for loud protestations of a bad out of bounds call in the first quarter of a Knicks-Pistons game.

So naturally I was glued to the TV last night to watch the first Knicks game following the blockbuster trade that had the Knicks send 4/5 of their starting team to the Denver Nuggets to acquire Carmelo Anthony and Chauncey Billups, (there were some other players involved, but essentially these were the important aspects in the transaction).

The game, which resulted in a 114-108 Knicks victory over the Milwaukee Bucks, was an uneven, at times ugly, and almost hard to watch affair.  The Knicks were obviously having some difficulty adjusting to the new composition of the team, there was naturally a heightened sense of interest and excitement in the game it being Anthony's first as a Knick, and the Bucks, despite playing hard throughout, simply are not a very good team.

Anthony, the focus of intense discussion and speculation in recent weeks as the Nuggets tried to work out trades with several teams in the league, played an inconsistent kind of game.  Clearly a little nervous in the first half, he missed several easy shots he'd normally make, and had some difficulty throughout the game finding a natural rhythm and flow, particularly on offense.  His final stat line - 27 points on 10 for 25 shooting, 10 rebounds, and 2 steals.  On paper not a great game, not horrible, but on paper certainly not a performance that in the business world we would rate as 'Exceeds Expectations'.

But the old sports cliche, 'they don't play the games on paper' is usually true, and to make a fair evaluation of Anthony's performance, you would have to actually watch the game. Late in the fourth quarter the other Knicks star player, Amare Stoudemire had fouled out, leaving Anthony the primary option on offense for the team.  In these last few minutes of the game, Anthony hit two critical baskets, one a baseline drive and dunk, and the other about a 12-foot step back jumper, to cement the Knicks victory.  These two possessions and baskets were the most important ones of the game, and without them it would have been entirely possible for the Bucks to pull out a win.

I know you don't care about basketball, and if you have kept reading to this point, my thanks.

Why might any of this matter at all to business, work, management?  Because last night Carmelo struggled at times, shot a low percentage, looked a little tight, and for three-and-a-half quarters was wholly unremarkable.

But in the end, the part of the game known as 'Winning Time', he came though, and delivered what the team needed to for the victory.  If after the game the coach of the team were to give Anthony a classic performance review in the corporate sense, there is no doubt the bad shots in the first quarter, the passing the ball out of bounds, the confusion on defense - would all probably be duly recorded and noted.  Sure, the two huge buckets in the 4th quarter would make the review as well, but I bet they would appear to have equal, if not reduced, importance to the overall 'grade' as the negative plays.

The final performance rating would probably be a 'Meets Expectations' with possible recommendations to work on his shot, and study the team playbook.  

And I think we do this all the time when we manage people and write performance reviews.  We feel a kind of strange desire to make sure we find and highlight the negative, the odd item or two that has to be worked on, or to include the mention of some small incident, even a relatively unimportant one, as a kind of balance to the positive results achieved during the year. By creating this 'balance' we feel like we have been somehow more fair, but I bet the employees walk out of the meeting thinking only about the negative, and feeling like Carmelo would if instead of talking about the big baskets he made in the fourth quarter, we wanted to dive in to the missed layups in the first quarter.

Sure, we want to achieve top performance all the time, at every stage of the game so to speak, but is that realistic, or even possible?  I wonder if a better focus is needed on what is really important and what makes the critical difference between winning and losing.

I suppose we might need a better understanding of what 'Winning Time' means at work.

Basketball and Bad Hires

For the several years of his professional basketball career, Richard Jefferson was an extremely successful, popular, and accomplished player.  

A quick review of the first part of Jefferson’s career, (courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com), reveals two appearances in the NBA Finals, one year as a Top 10 scorer in the league, and two years averaging over 22 points scored per game.

Prior to the 2009-2010 season Jefferson was traded to the San Antonio Spurs, one of the best teams in the league over the past decade, and winners of four NBA championships in the last twelve years.

The Spurs roster is laden with all-time greats (Tim Duncan), current stars (Manu Ginobili), and international point guards/pretty boys (Tony Parker).  Their head coach, Gregg Popovich is regarded as one of the top two or three coaches in the entire league. While still a top-team, the Spurs core were starting to show some age, and an infusion of a fast, athletic, wing player who could score (Jefferson, pretty much exactly), was seen as an important step to help keep the Spurs in title contention.

So on paper the addition of Jefferson, an established solid-almost-star type player, to a team with a consistent winning tradition, full of smart, talented players, and a great coach should have been (forgive yet another basketball reference), a slam-dunk.  After a short adjustment period by the player and the team, Jefferson should have thrived, and the team should have greatly benefited and improved their overall play.  

So what actually happened in Jefferson’s first year with the Spurs?

He struggled. Mightily. His per game averages for scoring, rebounds, and assists plummeted from the performance standards he had established the past several seasons with his former team. Watching Jefferson play, he never seemed in synch or comfortable with the Spurs’ systems, and meshing with the other star players on the team.  Jefferson looked unsure, a step slow, and eventually it appeared like his confidence was shot, and ultimately he had the worst year of his career, by both statistical and observational objectives.

A classic bad signing, or in the workplace context, a bad hire.

Maybe.

Conventional wisdom says the organization needs to cut their losses, to find a way out of the contract, trade Jefferson for whatever they could get, or in the ‘normal’ world of work, simply give him the old, ‘It’s not working out’ speech and wish him well on the way out the door. A bad hire is a bad hire, right?

So what did the Spurs do after the 2009-2010 season ended?  

Instead of figuring out how to get whatever they could for Jefferson on the market, team coaches and officials challenged Jefferson to change his approach to the game to better fit his new team, their proven and successful playing style, and Coach Popovich’s expectations. For a veteran player, one that had quite a bit of personal success in this career, it would have been easy for Jefferson to balk or gripe or to pretend that the problem with his performance was some one else's.

Instead, Jefferson bought in to the program, and in the off-season worked hard on the specific parts of his game that needed improvement and refinement to better align with the team goals and style of play. So far, in 2010-2011 his performance is improved, and the team has had the best record in the league for most of the season. Sure, over time, age (Jefferson is 30, an age at which peak basketball performance is usually passed), and other factors might conspire to detract from his individual performance, but certainly through just over half of the season the decision by the team and player to work though their adjustment issues, and commit to doing the necessary work to adapt and improve appears to have been a good one.

Ultimately while Jefferson is no longer a star player, he is an important contributor making a significant impact on what is currently the best team in the league.  Will the Spurs win the championship this year? Who knows. But by most accounts the team’s decision to stick by their ‘bad hire’ a little bit longer than many would have wished seems to be paying off.

In the workplace it is often said that many leaders are too slow to pull the plug on under performers, and while that is certainly true in many cases it is likely also true that some leaders and organizations are too hasty.  Even traditionally strong performers, when placed into an entirely new environment, with new colleagues, systems, norms, and expectations, might take longer that originally hoped to make the necessary adjustments.

How long is too long?  When do you label someone a ‘bad hire?’

And when do you as a leader and organization make a commitment and challenge to turn the ‘bad hire’ into a high performer?

Postscript - I really can’t stand the Spurs, but that is because as a Knicks fan I am jealous of their success.

Deliver the Wow

Cleaning up my trusty travel backpack from the last several weeks of traveling to events like HR Florida, HR Technology, and this week HR Southwest, and I found a small slip of paper in one of the pockets that said simply, 'Deliver the Wow'.flickr - wiedmaier

The phrase sounded familiar, but I could not remember why I jotted it down.  I dug into one of my vendor-branded notebooks from one of these trips (my favorite swag),  and discovered the source of the 'Wow' quote.  

At the HR Technology Conference during one of the vendor 'shootout' sessions, (where vendors are asked to demonstrate live their solutions to several common and important talent management processes), one of the vendors, (I honestly can't remember which one), was running through the steps and functionality around performance management and appraisal processes.

The demonstration highlighted the application's ability to assign and rank the importance of key competencies to a given role, and allowed the manager to evaluate the employee on their degree of demonstrated mastery of the identified competencies.  It was solid, if not spectacular functionality, pretty much all the performance management solutions provide that kind of capability today. 

But what caught my attention was that in the demonstration of manager assessment of employee competencies for a role in a Customer Service position, one of the specific competencies that was being rated was called 'Deliver the Wow'.

Tucked neatly right alongside some standard competencies like 'Demonstrates Integrity' and 'Customer Focus' was this sort of out of place seeming competency called 'Deliver the Wow'.  It seemed to me that it really did fit though.  So many of the traditional competencies that get assigned in performance management processes are really hard to measure and assess effectively and objectively.

How exactly do you rate someone on 'Ethical Behavior?' By noting the employee did not steal out of the till 98% percent of the time?.  By taking careful inventory of the supply cabinet to make sure no one nicked a ream of paper for their kids middle school book reports? I guess we just assume most people are behaving ethically if we don't catch them not behaving ethically and leave it at that.  But when performance management processes force the manager to give a numerical or some other ranking on an 'Ethics' competency, then what really justifies a 3 or 4?  It is kind of an all-or-nothing thing I think, and then it becomes sort of irrelevant.

But something like 'Deliver the Wow', that has some potential. The successful demonstration of delivering 'Wow' moments, whether to external or internal customers seems easier to assess, and likely a better mark of differentiation across employees in a given role. How does the manager know which employees are really successful in 'Wow' delivery? 

Well, they probably already know. There probably is a paper trail of 'Wow' moments. Unsolicited email testimonials from enthused customers, internal or external (LinkedIn?) recommendations from colleagues and partners, or even special recognition at holiday time from vendors (warning, do not use for folks in Purchasing). It is not so easy to 'know' about focus, ethics, and other more nebulous concepts.

In fact, Delivering the Wow is probably a competency, if you are a believer in identifying and assessing these kinds of things at appraisal time, that should be on everyone's performance plan. 

The HR Technology Conference vendor shootouts are really all about the solution, and this particular solution, like all of them, was tight, capable, and effectively demonstrated the required functionality. But to me, the most interesting aspect of the demonstrations was 'Deliver the Wow', and it to my recollection was not mentioned by the presenter or anyone in the audience. 

The technology on display was fantastic, awesome even.  But 'Delivering the Wow' is more awesome. 

Any solution you buy for Performance Management these days will let you evaluate any competency you like, but not all of them will make it easier for you to Deliver the Wow.

That is if you are trying to measure for Wow in the first place.

Get Rid of the Performance Review?

Tonight on the HR Happy Hour Show, our guest will be UCLA Professor Samuel Culbert, author of the recent book, 'Get Rid of the Performance Review!'.

Show time is 8PM EDT and the call in number is 646-378-1086.

From the title alone, it is abundantly clear where Professor Culbert stands on the issue, and in the book he makes his argument clearly and forcefully.

According to Culbert performance reviews are fatally flawed for the following reasons (there are a few more in the book, but these are the major ones):

1. They are completely one-sided, boss-dominated exercises, where only one opinion matters, the boss, and employees quickly learn to adapt and adjust to 'boss-pleasing' behavior, that is not necessarily in the best interests of the organization as a whole.

2. The notion of 'pay for performance' that is embraced by so many organizations, is largely BS, and that compensation is mostly a product of market conditions, whether the firm desires to retain an employee, and the available budget to adjust pay treatment.  Performance, especially as documented in the formal review, factors very little into this compensation decision.

3. Performance reviews actually have the opposite of the desired effect, to help employees improve and develop.  They are de-motivating, de-humanizing, and effectively sour the most important relationship in the organization, that of boss-employee.  

That is the gist of the arguments made in the book that argue for the abolishment of the performance review as most of us recognize it.

Professor Culbert then continues in the book to offer and describe his suggested alternative to the formal, traditional annual performance review, a construct he has termed the 'Performance Preview', a kind of ongoing, two-way dialogue centered around discussion of some key questions that are meant to better inform and equip both the boss and the employee as to each other's needs, styles, and work preferences.  

Rather than dive in to all the details of the 'Preview', (I have to save something for the show), I would rather get your opinions on the issue of performance reviews, and perhaps some insights into your experiences with them, both administering them as a manager, and receiving them as an employee.

So to help me out in preparation for the show tomorrow, please drop a comment letting me know where you stand on performance reviews. 

Are they:

1. Essential to the management of people and the alignment of effort to organizational objectives

2. A largely administrative process meant to provide legal backup for disciplinary procedures

3. A great tool for employee development, if only we could teach managers to really coach and mentor employees more effectively

4. A complete waste of time, and a soul-crushing, morale killing exercise in futility, and they should be abolished.

5. Something else entirely.

Let me know what you think in the comments, or send out a tweet with your thoughts in the next couple of days - just be sure to tag it with #HRHappyHour.

Oh yeah, please feel free to rate the effectiveness of this post, my self-assessment gives it a solid 'Meets Objectives'.