Excerpt
There's historically much controversy surrounding the topic of performance reviews, and it’s time to take a fresh look at reinventing the entire process—from the appraisal template to the content descriptors that set the measurement bar—in order to initiate positive organizational and cultural change within your company. Performance appraisal as a whole must be relevant to everyone—those being evaluated, those doing the evaluations, and those senior leaders who look to the performance management system to gain a better understanding of how their people are performing year after year. It’s time to make performance management and measurement concrete and actionable. The system needs to get right to the bottom line and remain very transparent in terms of its format, structure, and intent. And it needs to focus on positive, transformative, and breakthrough performance not only to assess but also to drive corporate and individual change. Despite what you may have heard or have come to believe, these are all possible through the performance review, and we’re writing this book to make it easy for you to accomplish. It’s actually a lot simpler than you think . . .
Remember that the “people muscle” of any organization will always be its most critical asset in a knowledge-based economy, so companies that “speak performance,” that know how to measure and manage that particular asset, will, by definition, set themselves apart from their competition.
Is measuring human capital difficult? Yes. Does it depend on a whole number of variables and assumptions? Of course. Will it always be subject to criticism and a certain level of dissatisfaction? Absolutely! But that’s because we’re human beings measuring and evaluating other human beings, so the system will never be—and isn’t meant to be—perfect. It does, however, have to become part of your organization’s daily lexicon, and there are some simple yet profound ways of rolling out this message, measuring results, and building an achievement-oriented culture where workers are able to motivate themselves in the light of the wisdom and expectations that emanate from the top.