Later this year McGraw-Hill will be publishing the second edition of Perfect Phrases For Performance Reviews. It’s a bit of a departure from the first edition and the other books that we compete with, so I felt it was a good time to share the preface to the new book. I’d be interested in comments, since the book is not complete yet.
The Most Important Preface You Will Ever Read
I don’t know this guy. I do know that on April 1, 2009, (that IS April Fools Day) Tom Roche wrote what would have been a scathing review of my book, Perfect Phrases For Performance Reviews, if only he had actually read the book. I have to admit dismay and amusement at people who can’t even be bothered to read something they are reviewing., but truth is, that is the ONLY objection I have to Tom’s comments.
He’s right. The people who comment are correct. The title of his critique (with link) Continue reading
A colleague asked me where one could find criticisms of Employee Engagement, the buzzterm championed by marketplace monster, Gallup. There’s tons of stuff about it pushing it and making it appear to be as vital and important as…well, let’s see, Total Quality Management, Quality Circles, Employee Empowerment, and on and on.
There is very little PUBLICLY available on the Internet that asks the critical questions one should ask of any “movement” in the workplace. Continue reading
Fred Nichols has oft suggested that we scrap performance appraisals, while I contend that we need to teach people to use it intelligently. Here’s a bit from the ongoing conversation.
I think this is a great example showing that we have a tendency to look at performance appraisal issues through our own direct experience, which is bound to be somewhat limited. If we’ve had bad experiences we tend to believe that ya might as well get rid of the whole thing. And most people have had some bad experiences.
Productivity, Excellence and Giftedness
Gregorio Billikopf
University of California
Ed. This piece was originally posted on HRNET by Gregorio Billikopf of the University of California. It has some excellent thoughts, but even more important it’s a great stimulus for thinking and discussion around many HR, training, performance and learning issues. Gregorio has kind given permission to reprint here on our blog. Also added in the reply section is Robert Bacal’s reply, also from HRNET.
Over the last week I have had a very stimulating conversation with a renowned physician and pathologist, Oliver Stanton, and Anders Ericsson, author of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) paper, “The making of an Expert.”1 The HBR article centers on the old question, “Are gifted people—or those who succeed in a field—born or made?” This has been the question employers have asked over the years. Can I, they ask. Train my weaker employees by putting them alongside the best to bring them up to the level of these outstandi΅g employees? Anders Eriΰsson et al suggest that indeed there are differῥnces in giftednesῳ, but that for the most part exerts and giftῥd performers are made, not born. In their paper they introduce three concepts that I wish to share here: 1) the importance of deliberate practice, 2) the avoidance of creeping intuition and 3) tῨe value of providing excῥllent coaches.
Anders has found that behind excellence there is almost always a lot of practice. He uses the expression deliberate practice because it is one thing to rehearse what one has already conquered, but deliberate practice involves working on those areas that do not come so effortlessly. For those truly seeking to excel, the paper recommends two hours per day of such focused practice. Many incorrectly come to think that these gifts just fall on peoples laps. One sportsman explained that people perceive him as a natural golfer, but what they do not see are the endless hours of practice that often yielded bloody hands. Many interesting examples are given from the fields of sport, literature, music and chess. Practice is especially productive under the eyes of the right coach, they argue persuasively. I would add that deliberate practice through introspection and self-learning is an important complement to having an excellent coach.
The second concept, creeping intuition, is the refusal of those who excel to automatically classify new information as something they have already seen before. Individuals who avoid the creeping intuition trap do not allow themselves to think they have already learned what there is to learn. Such successful individuals are constantly trying to improve and think of new possibilities. They do not fall into a rut.
Let us return to the question, “Are gifted people born or made? Is it enough for managers to get the right training? Without a doubt, better and more focused training will be of great help. Three decades ago I worked with a number of Junior Colleges and helped them introduce welding and mechanics training for farm workers. We used an individualized training metῨod which permitted participants to learn and progress at their own pace and become so outstandingdespite their limited formal educationthat one of the long time college instructors declared that these workers as a whole had outperformed his previous students. I have been conducting quality control studies along with a number ofᾠcolleagues in Chile. The results will permit us to help individuals to focus, through deliberate practice, on the type of plant or fruit defects that are difficult to identifyat both the group and individual level. These same principles can be applied to
non-agricultural jobs.
My own perspective on the topic of giftedness, productivity and excellence goes along these lines: There are great differences in individual productivity and these follow a normal distribution curve. My studies show that the best crew worker is typically capable of working 4 to 8 times faster than the worst in the same crew. Oliver Stanton shared data with me from his own pathology lab that confirms these numbers outside of agriculture. Differences in capability and productivity include ability to discern issues of quality, not just faster work. I am a great believer in job sample tests for all applicants, regardless of the job. Continue reading
Since 1998 Robert Bacal has produced a wide variety of helpful books on performance management and performance appraisals. All are practically oriented. Here’s a look at books on the subject published by McGraw-Hill, and available at amazon.com You can browse, find free excerpts and make your discounted purchases by hovering and/or clicking on the books you are interested in.
Performance appraisals are probably the most misused, and goofed-up management tool in existence. Starting from misunderstanding the whole point of appraisals, right on through to use of poor communication with employees, managers make a fairly consistent set of mistakes about employee reviews , and performance appraisals. Here’s some of them in the fourth in our series of common managerial mistakes.
Since there are a fair number of errors made by managers in the performance appraisal and employee review process, we’ll approach this set in brief point form. Stay tuned since we’ll be dealing with a few more performance appraisal errors in a future article in this series. Until then here’s the first five.
It’s not surprising that managers try to improve productivity and employee effectiveness by exhorting staff to “try harder”, or to make more of an effort in their jobs. It’s a natural human tendency to assume that the simple act of trying harder will result in better results, but more times than not, the assumption is incorrect.
Learn more about this common managerial mistake, its pitfalls, and what to do about it
In our often Western dominated organizational thinking, we attribute a lot of employee success (and our own success) to “trying harder”, or “working harder”. This assumption about the relationship of effort to effectiveness is often incorrect, since there are many more powerful forced that influence results.
Managers often get caught up in the idea that “if only employees would try harder, or work harder, we’d get far better results”. Caught in this incorrect assumption, they rely on exhortation of employees to improve productivity. It doesn’t usually work, and it can end up backfiring.
Today two blogger posted comments on the use of cookie cutter phrases in performance appraisals, references my books, and those of another writer. The two blogs are available along with my very very brief comments:
here and
A poster on trdev-l asked about how to handle performance evaluations when the company will not be offering pay raises due to the recession. Here’s my response
Good question. I know this has come up in other places. I think that if you have been stressing that the major reason for evaluations is to determine raises,then basically you are screwed, because both
managers and employees will balk, and the latter will almost certainly see evaluations as hypocritical and fake.