Hey Legends!

In his book, Work Rules (highly recommend), Laszlo Bock recounts a story of Donna Morris (former Chief HR Officer of Adobe), that has fundamentally changed the way companies across the globe conduct Performance Reviews.

Morris was travelling to India, where she was to be interviewed by The Economist.

Perhaps it was jetlag, or a particularly spicy Vindaloo, or possibly one too many Kingfisher Premium Lagers, but for some reason Morris was “feeling edgier than normal” and decided to openly discuss her desire to get rid of annual performance reviews.

After a few minutes of reflection about what Morris had just broadcasted to the world there was the “oh shit moment”, and Morris quickly contacted her Comms team to get ahead of the story. In quick succession, an article was posted on Adobe’s intranet about the possible changes; a wave of employee feedback came in trashing the annual review process and supporting the changes… and “The Check-In” was born.

Stories of this new approach spread like wildfire throughout the tech industry and into mainstream media. And very soon there was a "who's who" list of companies that were promoting that they too were part of the avant-garde.

(Note: For various reasons a number of these companies later returned to some form of the Annual Performance Review in form or another.)

So, was Morris’ interview with The Economist a calculated and strategic plan to bring in a new Performance Development system that was objectively better than the old Annual Reviews? Or has the world blindly adopted Check-Ins as the gold standard based off an accidental jet-lagged rant?

Let me be clear here. I am NOT disrespecting Donna Morris! I absolutely respect what she has done and will consider my career a success if I can have 1/10^th of the impact that she has had. I also agree with Morris that the Annual Review sucks, something needed to be done, and I applaud her for being able to create that change.

Also, I'm not saying that Check-Ins (or Annual Reviews) are inherently bad either; just that neither of them should be blindly accepted as gospel.

What I do want to call out here is how many companies blindly adopt the latest HR fad; often without a clear understanding of why they are doing it, what business problem they are trying to solve, what they hope to achieve, and/or whether it is the best option for THEIR business.

So, before deciding how you want to do Performance Development (or any other People & Culture initiative for that matter), first ask yourself:

What business objective are we attempting to meet? Or what business problem are we trying to solve?

Do your employees want more feedback? Is there a performance problem? Are you wanting to increase productivity? Are managers spending too much time with reviews? Are you looking to change/innovate as a company?

Is this a business wide problem? Or are you reacting to the needs of a noisy few?

I worked with a company that implemented an entire Performance Development program, which cost them tens of thousands of dollars and months of work. In the end, they conducted reviews for 4 people (“the noisy few”) and found that the process was absolute overkill for the other 90% of their employees.

What are the KEY activities that could help you, your managers and employees achieve that result?

Do employees need more feedback? Do they need more clarity of objectives? Do managers need more time? Do you need more clarity/transparency around the link between performance and salary reviews? Do you simply need to have a tough conversation with one or two people who are underperforming?

What is your Performance Development MVP (Minimum Viable Process)?

You don't have to do it all. And you don't have to do exactly what everyone else is doing.

MVP: Time for action!

(See what I did there?)

1. Bring your employees on this journey - ask them what they would find valuable and let them know that you will be trialling a new approach.
2. Find the smallest number of actions that will help you achieve most of your result (remember the 80/20 Principle)
3. Trial the new process with one or two teams
4. Get feedback from employees and managers.
5. Make adjustments and repeat
6. Let the process evolve into something that suits YOUR business objectives and YOUR culture.

I've got far too many strong emotions and opinions about Performance Development for a "balanced human being". I'll be sure to share more thoughts on the elements that can go into your MVP in the weeks to come.

Cheers!

Clint

PS. How could I make this better for you?