I attended an ICT conference this morning.  The first two speakers were from CISCO and IBM respectively.  Sometimes it amazes me that IBM still exists but that is another story.  Anyway, the talks given were fairly unspectacular.  But, during both of the talks reference was made to how these organisations were having to build internal work infrastructures to support collaboration.

Cisco in particular emphasised how they had moved from 'hierarchical management' to 'command and control' and finally to collobarative team working over the last 10 years.  This chimed with some of the changes we have been seeing in 360 degree feedback over the years.  When we first started, you would find people wanted their direct reports to give feedback and "a couple of peers".  Over time the peer group has become larger but generally 4-5 is normal.  In the last year though we have had a number of clients looking for over 20 peers to give their responses.  This matches a move to collaborative working.

Indeed one of our most recent clients - a very large healthcare provider in the US - is looking to categorise people very differently in the 360 degree appraisals that they are conducting.  Rather than categorising by relationship they are categorising by department.  From Bowland Solutions' perspective we are having to review our reports to ensure that they give good analysis from such a wide source of people.

One thought - and used by one of our clients - is that we should source our feedback on a regular basis from the teams we have become part of rather than on an annual basis.


Brendan