We often work with our clients in designing their competency frameworks to support a 360 degree feedback process and I have become conscious of some subtle shifts in what is expected of leadership teams in the new, ambiguous and changing world we find ourselves in.

Most notable is a desire for leaders to exhibit resilience, tenacity, an outward looking focus and agility; these underpin an ability to respond and overcome constant challenges, where the answers aren't always readily known and one must make decisions on the information available.

Information abounds, data is all around us, but it is the ability to make sense of this and apply it sensibly that can distinguish 'good' from 'great'.

To this end, I am reminded of a quote which unfortunately I cannot attribute, which states:

"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad"

Let's get 'Wisdom' in the mix with 360 degree appraisal!

John

Picking up on my last post, emphasizing the importance of setting well-formed objectives, it has been interesting to note through our training programmes, just how difficult this step in the performance appraisal cycle proves to be for many line managers.

 

Undertaking a training session on how to set well-formed objectives probably wouldn’t feature highly in most line managers priorities, but we are seeing more and more that this module helps unlock some of the difficulties line managers struggle with further down the line; most notably, giving positive and negative feedback, coaching conversations and critically the end-of-year performance review meeting.

 

One of the key difficulties in setting ‘good’ objectives is a superficial attempt to apply the SMART template; the term is so ubiquitous that the temptation is to run through it without thinking through what it really means.

 

For example, is it ‘R’ for relevant or realistic? If it is realistic, what is the difference between that and achievable? What measures are appropriate? Is it enough to detail the tasks and activities or should the goal be solely outcome oriented?

 

Without this clarity (and practice), what results is a murky version of a SMART goal, which is nebulous and has enough ambiguity to make an honest assessment of performance almost impossible and performance appraisals a challenging task.

 

John

Love them or loathe them? Performance appraisals seem to engender strong feelings in both camps, with firm advocates for structured performance reviews seeing them as a productive and valuable process both for the individual and organisation, and as many seeing them a necessary evil that could be replaced by a blank sheet of paper and a chat.

Such polarity probably represents the very different experiences people have had both as an appraisee and an appraiser; it can go horribly worng, but it can also go spectularly right.

Setting ones own experience to one side and thinking through the purpose of performance appraisals objectively, one should come to the conclusion that an appraisal process, whether it be highly structured or very loose, is useful if it serves to improve the performance of an individual and by implication the organisation.

What we would see as the first critical step in an appraisal process improving performance would be well-formed objectives; SMART or otherwise, objectives are the key - with them, the whole process of performance management has robust foundations, but without them, all subsequent steps in the process such as coaching conversations, giving feedback, and ultimately the performance review, teeter on a house of cards.

John

A quick note to announce some new performance appraisal training programmes that we believe will support our online performance review systems.

Performance Planning
This programme helps Line Managers become skilled in setting well-formed (or SMART) objectives and outcomes for their team; it covers what objectives seek to do, the different types of objectives which suit different job roles, what a well-formed objective looks like and finally how to write and set these in a performance planning meeting at the beginning of the year.

Performance Conversations
This programme helps Line Managers become skilled in handling those all important conversations that should happen all year round; setting some great objectives at the performance planning stage is not enough, what is required is the ability to review and modify objectives throughout the year, offer positive and negative feedback and be able to coach individuals to success.

Performance Appraisals
This programme helps Line Managers tackle the end-of-year appraisal; as an event, it needs to be well prepared for, structured and followed up effectively. Delegates will learn how performance appraisals form part of a wider performance management cycle, core skills required in the appraisal and a logical structure to follow.

If any of these programmes are of interest and you would like to know more then just drop me an email at john@bowlandsolutions.com.

John

We were very pleased to have been invited last month to present at a 'HR in Law' breakfast briefing seminar on how to implement a 360 degree feedback process within a firm.

As well as a high number of attendees, there seemed to be a real appetite for the topic with some great questions being raised about how to introduce the process within a partnership structure.

Not unsurprisingly, the concerns raised were less to do with the technology of an online system to handle the process, and more to do with how the critical face-to-face debrief should be approached.

We have written many times before as to what makes this stage of the process go well, and we re-iterated the points during this seminar; namely, that you quickly establish the boundaries of the debrief which is not to give the feedback but to explore the feedback with the partner.

The dynamic of the debrief changes instantly, as the recipient feels they have the opportunity to discuss the feedback without being judged; it becomes all about helping raise their self-awareness and where appropriate challenge them to accept that there are things worth paying attention to.

John

Our very own John Rice is running in this Sunday's Brighton marathon.  Here's a public good luck wish from everyone at Bowland.  John is raising money for Marie Curie Cancer Care.  If you'd like to donate to this great cause then click here.

Good luck John (and we're all confident you'll beat the womble outfit guy this time).


Brendan

We're scheduling our next 360 degree feedback seminar for June.  We'll confirm the exact date and location - which will be London based - in due course, but please register now if you'd like us to keep you informed as we get everything organised.  The seminar concentrates on how to effectively implement 360 degree feedback in your organisation.  We focus particularly on how to handle the debrief sessions.

Brendan

A note of thanks to those people who attended the seminar yesterday and to Davenport Lyons for hosting.  360 degree feedback always throws up interesting issues and ideas and yesterday was no exception.  John and I had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed everyone's contributions.

We are starting our plans for the next seminar, so if you are interested get in touch (we're currently switching over the advertising but we'll know what you intend if you register for a past seminar!) by selecting the webinar/seminar option from our blog or website  and we'll let you know the date and venue of the next one.

Brendan

How this links to 360 degree feedback will follow!

Let's assume we have a basic traffic light system.  And we find out that we have the following distribution

• Red 50% of the time
• Amber 10% of the time
• Green 40% of the time

And someone wants to know what colour it is on average.  What to do?

Average requires numbers.  

So, let's give Red the number 1, Amber the number 2, and Green the number 3.  A bit of Maths will find the average now (50% *1) + (10% * 2) + (40% *3) ... 1.9 is the answer.

So our average is 1.9 which is nearest to Amber (which we gave the number 2).  So on average the colour of the traffic light is Amber ... somewhere in the middle.

We know this is wrong - the light is on amber least of all - but it was an attractive solution somehow. 

Even more tempting is to ask people to respond to a question with responses that can be

• Strongly Agree
• Agree
• Neither agree nor disagree
• Disagree
• Strongly Disagree

and then give people a score out of 5 for how people answered on average.

Let's say we have done that and the average is 3.1.  What does that mean?  We're going to say that on average the respondents roughly "neither agree nor disagree" with the statement.  But go back to our traffic light example... the colour that the traffic light is least often is amber, what's to say the same hasn't happened here?

Statisticians will tell you that the underlying problem here is that you are treating categorical data as if it is numerical data; if you are very unlucky, you may find yourself in a debate about likert scales and the Polytomouse Rasch model.  What I want to highlight is, this superficially simple concept of giving each point a number and averaging the responses is not that simple and may lead to inaccurate conclusions.

Way's round it?  Either don't use averages in your report, or make it clear that you are using the scale to reflect a mark out of 5.  That at least gives your average credibility even if it doesn't get around the problem of the average obscuring the underlying scoring. 

Note, this doesn't stop you using numbers or charts in your report - I'll discuss that in another post.

This article forms part of the structure of a new white paper I am writing on reporting in 360 degree appraisals (I promise this is the heavily statistical bit and the rest is more down to what we see as best practice!).  If you sign up to our white papers, then you will receive that document as it is completed.  Click here to sign up.



Brendan

A brief note to highlight a recent article which had an interview with Google Europe boss John Herlih, in which he describes, amongst other things that make Google work well, how they take their people through 360 degree feedback every 6 months.

It is clear that they have a passion for attracting, recruiting, developing and retaining the best people, and this comes through in most articles written about Google - what is interesting here as well is how the 360 degree feedback results are shared with the whole company, providing a transparent process, which presumably serves to foster a more open culture.

Certainly not for everyone, but then when did Google ever follow the crowd...?

John

Here is a recent blog post I came across recently which lambasts a few management practices, one of these being 360 degree feedback processes.

As with many articles of this nature, I often find myself agreeing with some of what is said; poorly executed management practices, such as a badly implemented 360 degree appraisal process, can do more harm than good - so if people have a 'bad experience', it can colour their view about such practices permanently.

However, as with most things in life, this isn't a 'black & white' situation, and despite their being poor practice in evidence, there is also (certainly in our own experience) very good practice around which suggests that there is a danger of throwing the proverbial 'baby out with the bathwater' as one looks to kick against bad practice.

360 degree feedback should complement the whole myriad of management practices, tools and processes out there - it isn't a complete substitute for open, honest and regular communication between bosses and direct reports, peer to peer, etc,  which should most definitely be encouraged, but it certainly adds value as organisations seek to create this kind of transparent culture which can take time to take root.

John

Hal Varian, Google's chief economist, is quoted as saying that "Data are widely available, what is scarce is the ability to extract wisdom from them".  I'm focusing heavily at the moment on debriefing 360 degree feedback and the 360 degree feedback report.  For both an upcoming seminar, and a new whitepaper, I'm looking to fine tune our thoughts around how we make best use of a 360 feedback process.

The current line of thinking is to consider how data becomes information becomes knowledge/wisdom.  The 360 feedback questionnaire generates data.  Our challenge is to take that data and produce information from which the recipient gains knowledge.  Along the way we have to avoid the dangers of losing information or of forming unwise conclusions.

The report and the conversation around the report is where the transformation happens and where best practice can lead to the best knowledge outcomes.

You can register for our 360 feedback seminar by clicking here.  If you are interested in our white papers then subscribe here - you would then automatically receive the white paper described above as it is produced.


Brendan

360 degree feedback deliberately generates data from a range of sources - it creates more data than a standard performance appraisal.  Annual performance appraisals are also starting to commonly seek information from a range of sources - it reflects a move to more networked organisations and less structured boss->subordinate relationships.

That all makes sense to me - it is a sensible growth in data.  But when it comes to the annual performance appraisal working out what is worth measuring is important.  I've been thinking about this a lot as I've been looking recently as my wife develops a new business promoting deals and discounts for days out in the UK.

Her website has Google analytics that tells her how many people visit the site, which pages are popular, etc.  The blog http://blog.topdogdays.com tells her how many people have subscribed to the blog.  Her twitter service http://www.twitter.com/topdogdays tells her how many people are following her.  Amazon tell her how many people have bought a book having visited the site, and google tell her how many people have clicked on an advert on the site.  Data, data, everywhere.  Eventually all of this data can distract from the purpose of the business and managing it.  But it is highly seductive and of course in the early days it is great feedback.

For all of us when reviewing performance - or setting the targets for next year - it is critical to boil down the measures to the key performance indicators.  A term that makes a lot of sense but is often abused.  We need to watch the key performance indicators - not all of them.  In a previous life, I ran a call centre operation.  We had stats coming at us from all directions - all that really mattered was 1) did we answer the calls and 2) did we provide a great service when we did.  Ring time, call duration, "not ready" time, and hundreds of other numbers were indicators but not key indicators.

Brendan

I was listening to Radio 5 in the UK.  There was a debate about class - a standard fixation.  Initially a couple of experts in the field discussed the issues around class and social mobility, with the presenter facilitating the debate.  All good so far and I was learning stuff.  Then "Chris from Manchester" called in.  It is a feature of many news avenues now that we are all invited to contribute.  Chris wasn't an expert, he was a perfectly fine person with an opinion and I was now listening to it.  It wouldn't be long before another 20 people would call in with their opinion and I began to learn less and less.

In 360 degree feedback we seek feedback - opinion - from a variety of people.  We sometimes get a desire to garner feedback from many, many people.  The concern is that if we don't ask everyone possible then 1) someone will feel left out and 2) we will miss a piece of valuable feedback.  At times, for certain clients, these are valid concerns and the solution is to get feedback from 20-30 people.  But usually, getting feedback from too many people has two problems.

First, we get the "Chris from Manchester" problem.  Chris feels the need to offer an opinion even though he's not an expert (read; he doesn't actually know this person that well).  Chris writes a lot of commentary and his scoring gets equal weight with people who spend every day with the 360 feedback recipient.

Second, when we get the 360 feedback report back, we can't see the wood for the trees.  It's like spending the day on Twitter.  You know something important must be in here but you can't find it because of the volume of data that is coming to you.

So - unless you have specific reasons (normally cultural concerns) that you have to be aware of - be selective in who gives feedback.  The quality of your knowledge will improve.


Brendan

One author wrote that if you want to make performance appraisals really difficult then link the individual's pay to their numerical rating.

Without judgement, we take the position that some organisations wish to use the performance appraisal process to help them determine the level of renumeration – salary or bonus – of individuals. If that is the  case, then how should the performance appraisal process be run to best achieve this?

First, let us consider what is a good outcome. We would argue that a good outcome for the advocates of performance related pay is

• Individuals motivated to achieve targets that will improve the organisation and meet the organisational strategy.
• The correct people getting the correct rewards
• An efficient performance review process that delivers the benefits without using those benefits up in administrative burden
• A robust process that stands scrutiny from external parties particularly on equality

When you consider the list above you are immediately struck by the need to get the start right. It is not so much the system of calculating rewards that matters – more it is a matter of ensuring that the measures are generated well. Better that our grading structure is simplistic than we skip past the step of generating fair targets.

So, first and foremost if you are looking to implement performance related pay and are using performance appraisals to support that implementation – spend a lot of time thinking about how to get the measure right. Continuing our humble theme of not knowing what is right for you, let us describe some options that we have seen work.

• Weighted objectives, agreed between manager and employee and cascaded from the organisational strategy and graded for achievement.
• Value statements derived from the company values and graded for compliance.
• KPI indicators developed in consultation with employees
• Monthly targets, adjusted each month against which employees are graded/scored each month
• Team/Organisation objectives against which whole team's are measured
• Survey based data – e.g. customer satisfaction scores, against which individuals and teams are reviewed

Before embarking on performance related pay we would advocate a thorough consideration of what you are looking to achieve.  If you decide that it is right for your organisation then I hope you find this note useful as a first step to delivering a robust process.


Brendan

The appraisal meeting strikes fear into many managers. They fear its time-consuming nature and they fear the meeting itself. The former issue is often cultural. The time spent on performance appraisals is a fantastic investment for managers if the process is run well. A  stitch in time saves nine.

The meeting itself is only feared by poorly trained managers who are uncertain of how to handle the meeting. Appraising an individual is an unnatural task for many managers but it can be trained.

The structure of our own training course for the performance appraisal meeting is as follows.

• Understanding the purpose of performance management and the annual cycle
• How to review performance in-year
• How to conduct the end-year performance appraisal meeting
• How to handle performance and behaviour problems
• Use of coaching within appraisals: the GROW model
• Core skills: listening, asking questions, giving feedback, confronting, supporting.

Contact us if you are interested in this training course, or if you would like the performance appraisal white paper that this blog post is an excerpt from.


Brendan

I was reading a book on long distance cycle training.  The author referred to SMARTER objectives.  The acronym was used differently, although the SMART was very similar to the HR useage.

Specific
Measurable
Agreed (he referred to sharing your goal with someone else)
Realistic
Time-phased
Exciting
Recorded

The two latter lines are the new ones to me.  Recorded is fine - it just makes sense, but exciting catches the eye.  An exciting objective in an performance appraisal sound far-fetched?  But why not?  And if exciting is too far - surely interesting is something we could look for?

Too often you see dry goals that are unlikely to drive someone to higher performance or gain personal reward from achieving the goal.

I've started training to complete a cycle ride from Land's End to John O'Groats in the UK (about 900 miles) in 9 days.  A wonderfully SMART objective - although I have dark moments where realistic is in doubt!  And I find the idea so exciting that I'm motivated for training, buying books to learn about how I can improve endurance, and putting my own milestones in place to make sure I'm on track.

Worth a thought - a SMARTER goal in an annual performance review form could lead to considerable improvement.

Brendan

This is an excerpt from our performance appraisal white paper.

The common advice is that at the annual appraisal nothing should come as a surprise. Through regular feedback the manager should ensure that an employee is always aware of how things are going, where they stand, where their greatest achievements lie and where they need to develop. We agree with all of this. There remains a question of how often the organisation and the people involved want to formalise this process.

The benefits of the formalisation is it ensures noone is slipping under the radar, allows the organisation to get some data back that it can direct training and other interventions towards, and it supports company practices such as pay reviews, and promotions.

Annual is too infrequent – too much changes in a year. But every other structure after that is down to individual organisations. Our view is that commonly an interim 6 month review is what is needed for formal appraisal. A monthly meeting should be scheduled in as good practice but keep that unbureaucratic.

Brendan

It may be worth pointing out at this stage that these excerpts from our performance appraisal white paper is a suggested order of working rather than a suggested order of importance. Done properly the personal development plan should  be the most important part of the performance appraisal.   Assuming that one of the main intentions of this process is to have people improve and so lead to improved organisational performance then a development plan is the key.

The reason for the order is that we find that a practical consideration is whether the  development plan is part of the same annual appraisal meeting and form completion process as the  objectives, values, and scoring. Often it is not. Indeed, practical constraints aside we would suggest that the development plan is kept separate from the appraisal form itself. It  requires a slightly different mindset and lives in a different way.

In principle the development plan should describe the skills, knowledge, and behavioural  changes that the individual is looking to develop over the coming time period. It generally  follows that most of the development plan should flow out of the review of prior year  objectives / values and consideration of goals for the coming year. This is important and  needs guidance to those completing the form. That an individual does not know Spanish and  would like to learn the language is only relevant if 1) they need to know it for work or  2) the organisation has a value of broadening peoples abilities.

The performance appraisal form is commonly a general HR domain. The development plan must be produced in concert with the learning and development/training team. Much completing of  Excel spreadsheets can be eliminated by a well designed, online development plan.

This is an excerpt from our performance appraisal white paper.

Brendan