OKAY! HERE IS MY TAKE ON AN ALTERNATIVE TO PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL!

OKAY! HERE IS MY TAKE ON AN ALTERNATIVE TO PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© April 13, 2010


REFERENCE:

Some readers felt I avoided to take a stand on performance appraisal. I hope this helps.

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In 1980, I directed the largest Quality Control Circle (QCC) program in the United States at Honeywell Avionics, Inc., Clearwater, Florida. There were more than 1,000 hourly workers participating religiously in these quality circles, while 1,000 engineers and 2,000 professional support personnel participated half heartedly seeing them as being a cosmetic and inconsequential intervention, which of course they were.

That said I did something that was quite revealing to me. Each hourly quality circle had from ten to fifteen members, people working on the same project. In the course of my work with them, I asked them to name the three people in their respective groups who were most important to the success of the project, being careful to focus on the work not the popularity of the person.

The first time I did this the results came back mixed with no clear indicator of who was and wasn’t contributing. Over time, we were able – as a group – to decide what criteria indicated the most significant contributions and who were the persons most likely to be responsible for such contributions.

The top three, not often in the same order, were mentioned some seventy-five percent of the time consistently for each respective quality circle. Obviously, in a 15-member circle, some voted for themselves. Significant, all of them voted. Even more significant, three out of four of them agreed on who in their group was carrying the ball.

Professionals, paranoid to the nth degree, wouldn’t even participate in this exercise.

Then along came Tom Brokaw’s NBC Television electrifying program, “Japan Can, Why Can’t We?” (mid-1980). Quality circles exploded across the country, but now the workforce was becoming increasingly white-collar or professional versus blue-collar and unskilled workers. Quality Control Circles (QQC) were directed at the wrong workforce, and so they soared like Daedalus with the same ultimate fate.

Still, I did learn that the best evaluators of performance are the performers themselves. No ten-point scale of management, indeed, no management at all. Now in this electronic age this could be done on software that could accurately gauge input, and correctly target promotions on the basis of systematic criteria. If this is being done, I applaud it. The point is there is no need for managers in the process.

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