What should we pay your co-worker? No more questions for you 'Bro

It can be really difficult to rate your own performance at work as anyone that has stared frustratingly at their annual 'self-assessment' might agree. Trying to navigate that tricky tightrope between honestly, desire to reasonably match your self-ratings with the likely views of the boss, while making sure that a nice blend of ambition, honestly, and subtlety ends up painting a portrait of you in your best possible, (and defensible), light can be one of the most difficult exercises an employee has to deal with all year.

It's hard enough to be fair, objective, and completely honest about one's own perfrormance, and I think it at times is doubly hard to ask and to expect that same kind of fairness and objectivity when we are asked to participate in the evaluation of peers and colleagues at work as well. Whether it is in the context of a formal 360 degree evaluation, a less formal after-action or project review, or even in casual conversations with the boss about other team members, (the likely most awkward scenario of all), it is not all easy to be fair, accurate, and really honest sometimes. Judging, rating, evaluating other people's performance is an inexact science at best, and when self-interest factors in, ('If I say Steve did a great job, then does that make me look worse?', or, 'If I say Steve is a slacker, does that make me look like a petty schemer?', often resulting in 'I'll just say Steve did a good job in the most vague terms possible so that I can't be responsible for anything that happens.').

Beyond the difficulty of rating peer performance, when the questions directly or indirectly go to 'How much should your colleague, Joe or Mary be paid', well then the fun really begins. Check out this video clip below, (email and RSS subscribers will need to click through), where Oklahoma City Thunder star Russell Westbrook is asked by a reporter if Westbrooks' teammate James Harden should receive what is known as a 'max contract', i.e., a contract for the maximum salary that league rules allow.

The question, and Westbrook's answer is essentially a little 360 degree assessment played out on camera. Westbrook is asked to 'rate' Harden as a player in the context that matter most in the NBA, the value of the contract that Harden should have. After a long pause, Westbrook answers in the only way he can, (and likely feels comfortable with), by giving a positive but vague review and endorsement of Harden as a player and team mate, (which is obvious to anyone that knows Harden and is familiar with the team), and completely avoids responding to the contract or compensation area. Finally, Westbrook issues a classic 'No more questions for you 'Bro', an indication that he in no way wants any part of participating in a discussion about another teammates contract status.

Westbrook shows on camera what many of us and our co-workers are thinking when faced with the same types of questions in the workplace, when 360 time comes around I think. Uncomfortable, generic answers, wanting nothing to do with the hard questions, (like compensation). Don't get me wrong, I think peer reviews and 360s can be really important and valuable, but I also think that you have to remember the at times tough spot you put the team in when asking them to do something, (rate each other), that often, they want no part of doing.

No more questions for you 'Bro.

Putting Performance in Context - Not Every Three-Yard Pass Means the Same

For fans of American football, with the start of the new season just two weeks away, a rush of frenzied activity is underway by millions to rate, select, and position their 'fantasy' teams for the upcoming year.

American football, and the evaluation of its players, has traditionally been much less focused on statistical measurements and quantitative analysis of performance than say other sports like baseball and basketball. There are many reasons for this historical de-emphasis on statistics. For one, there are many, many roles on a football team that don't register simple, easy to grasp numbers like touchdowns scored or yards gained. Second, the nature of the game itself, eleven players to a side, highly structured and orchestrated roles and actions on most every play, make considering 'team' success more straightforward and easily understood than individual performance. And lastly, for many of the most important positions like Quarterback, past attempts to develop statistical-based measures or performance have been considered lacking, as many experienced football analysts claim that simply doing calculations on yards gained, passing completions, and even passing touchdowns registered can only offer partial insight into what defines and demonstrates superior performance for that critical position.

The primary metric that has been commonly used to assess and compare quarterbacks has been the Quarterback rating, a measure that takes into account the raw data surrounding the player's actions (passing yards, touchdowns, pass completion rates, etc.), applies some weighting factors to to the data, and produces a combined score or rating for the player, usually falling between about 85 and 100. But the main problem with the Quarterback rating (apart from no one really understanding how it is calculated), is that it is a statistical measurement only, i.e. it applies no situational context to performance. A three-yard pass completion in the early stages of the game gets weighted exactly the same as a three-yard pass completion at the end of the game, perhaps by converting the play, the quarterback's team was able to secure possession of the ball at a critical stage, and cement an important victory.

Some clever statisticians at ESPN are attempting to improves on the statistical evaluation of quarterbacks by introducing a new metric they all 'Total Quarterback Rating', or QBR. QBR will factor in many of the contextual indicators that play an important role in assessing player performance. Game situation, personnel on the field, formations used and more will all play a role in the metric. This will, hopefully, shine a more complete light on the evaluation of NFL quarterbacks. But it is much, much harder to create and calculate than simple math applied to the game box score.The Sanchize.

In football, and I suppose even in most organizations, the context in which performance is captured is often far more important, and more difficult to account for, than simply tracking the 'raw scores' or activities themselves. Was the quarterback under extreme duress when he passed for the touchdown? Was your sales manager under extreme duress when she successfully navigated through a complex contract negotiation to win that important account? Are you adequately considering the relative experience levels of your key player's support teams in your evaluations? How about the differences in competitive context across markets, lines of business, or geographies?

The first, and necessary step is chronicling performance - i.e. What happened?

The harder part, and even more important part, is understanding the conditions present when it happened, and what that means for the future.

Aside - J-E-T-S - JETS, JETS, JETS!!!!!

Looking for the positive, (and Phil Collins songs)

The crew over at Sonar6, a Human Resources Technology solutions provider, have released a new 'color paper', (kind of like a whitepaper, but in color, and way more fun to read), called '(you've got to) accentuate the positive'. This color paper is all about how as managers, and as humans, we tend to focus on the negative. We have performance conversations with employees that fixate on the one or two 'problems', while ignoring, or at least de-emphasizing the areas in which the employee excels.Phil Collins

And for the employee, this overweighed attention to the negative aspects of their performance can leave them frustrated, de-motivated, and perhaps even doubting their own ability and value as a member of the team.  The need to look for the positive and to end any performance related coaching conversation by 'closing upbeat' was also one of the themes in a webcast I participated in last week with Mike Carden from Sonar6 and Kris Dunn from Kinetix.

In the webcast Kris indicated a 3 to 1 ratio of positive feedback to negative (but constructive) feedback was probably the sweet spot for coaching team members whose overall performance was generally solid, but from time to time may need a tweak or a nudge to correct a behavior once in a while. Your mileage may vary, but I think most of us would admit, a relentless focus on what we are doing wrong, and why we stink, eventually drives us to the point where we would either shut down, rebel, of simply walk away.

So why was Phil Collins mentioned in the post title?

I recently came across an article (apologies but link to the original post is now dead), in which the author had a kind of litmus-test question he asked of people he met, that he might work with, or perhaps even hire on to his team. He would ask them to list their Top 5 Phil Collins songs. The idea being that Phil Collins has a large and wide enough catalog that just about anyone should be able to find at least something positive in what is considered by some a morass of negative.

This question, while certainly not scientific, provides some insight into the way a person thinks. Can they really find something to like, to single out for praise, and are they generally inclined to see things and situations in that manner. It stands to reason if you believe that in performance coaching in the workplace, that finding and accentuating the positive aspects of a team member's performance is one of the keys to making lasting improvements, then you had better have managers that can actually find the positives, even, as in the case of the Phil Collins catalog, they can be hard to uncover.

What do you think? Would you ask a managerial candidate to name their Top 5 Phil Collins songs?

What's your Top 5?

1. Easy Lover

2. Sussudio

3. Fill in the rest in the comments...

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.