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posts relating to performance without appraisal...
Recommended posts: Performance without Appraisal - Performance Without Appraisal (Mini-microsoft) - Righter Performance Appraisal
Related: Dr. Deming on performance appraisal
Gipsie B. Ranney has a great new article – The Trouble with Incentives: They Work
Could it be that physicians, insurers, drug companies, and patients are simply acting rational to the system? The players are incentivized to behave as they do. The system delivers what it is designed to deliver.
She sums it up very well:
Find more articles on management improvement in the Curious Cat Management Improvement Library, including: An Interim Report on Motivation in the Workplace by Gipsie Ranney, Remembering NUMMI by Gipsie Ranney and Improving Problem Solving by Ian Bradbury and Gipsie Ranney.
When you can’t prevent arbitrary targets and rewards based on meeting them the strategy I attempt to put in place is figure out how the system will be distorted in order to meet those targets and then put in measures that will discourage such distortions. It isn’t perfect but can help prevent some of the worst distortions (and degradation of system-wide performance they cause).
Related: Righter Incentivization – The Defect Black Market – Dr. Deming on the problems with managing with targets (and incentives based on them) – Extrinsic Incentives Kill Creativity
Henry Mintzberg, wrote an excellent article for the Wall Street Journal today, No More Executive Bonuses!
This may sound extreme. But when you look at the way the compensation game is played – and the assumptions that are made by those who want to reform it – you can come to no other conclusion. The system simply can’t be fixed. Executive bonuses – especially in the form of stock and option grants—represent the most prominent form of legal corruption that has been undermining our large corporations and bringing down the global economy. Get rid of them and we will all be better off for it.
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So, again, there is but one solution: Eliminate bonuses. Period. Pay people, including the CEO, fairly. As an executive, if you want a bonus, buy the stock, like everyone else. Bet on your company for real, personally.
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All this compensation madness is not about markets or talents or incentives, but rather about insiders hijacking established institutions for their personal benefit.
Too many large corporations today are starved for leadership – true leadership, meaning engaged leadership embedded in concerned management. And the global economy desperately needs renewed enterprise, embedded in the belief that companies are communities. Getting rid of executive bonuses, and the gambling games that accompany them, is the place to start.
It is an great article on bad pay systems that let a few top executives (and their hand picked board members) in many companies to loot the treasury of the company. I have written about this problem many times, including: CEOs Plundering Corporate Coffers – Excessive Executive Pay (2005) – Narcissistic Cadre of Senior Executives – The Best Leadership Is Good Management – Another Year of CEO’s Taking Hugely Excessive Pay – More on Obscene CEO Pay – More on Failed Executives
There are executives that don’t act like corrupt dictators looting their country, unfortunately they are less common than those that act like looters. And they all seem to have built cultures that taking respect for people is more important that feeding a few bloated egos. Akio Toyoda’s Message Shows Real Leadership, Tony Hsieh, the Zappo’s CEO – Warren Buffett – Honda has Never had Layoffs and has been Profitable Every Year
The obscene pay is not just a matter of people taking a tens of millions of dollars they don’t deserve. Companies whole management systems are distorted in ways that lead the company to risk all the other stakeholders future for the potential gain of a few senior executives.
If you read this blog, you know I believe extrinsic motivation is a poor strategy. This TED webcast Dan Pink discusses studies showing extrinsic rewards failing. This is a great webcast, definitely worth 20 minutes of your time.
What does Dan Pink recommend based on the research? Management should focus on providing workplaces where people have autonomy, mastery and purpose to build on intrinsic motivation.
via: Everything You Think about Pay for Performance Could Be Wrong
Related: Righter Incentivization – What’s the Value of a Big Bonus? – Dangers of Extrinsic Motivation – Motivate or Eliminate De-Motivation – Great Marissa Mayer Webcast on Google Innovation
An Introduction to Deming’s Management Teaching and Philosophy by Peter Scholtes – webcast from the Annual W. Edwards Deming Institute conference in Madison, Wisconsin, November 9th, 2008. My previous post on this speech: 6 Leadership Competencies.
Next month, the Annual Deming Institute conference will be held at Purdue on Oct 10th, 2009.
Related: Peter Scholtes’ Life – Curious Cat’s Deming on Management – The Leader’s Handbook – Performance without Appraisal
Unfortunately I cannot actually use the website to watch more than 5 minutes because the site fails to support linux operating system with their solution for longer videos. Google will only allow 10 minute videos without special permission – YouTube has not replied to my request for over 6 months. Update: Twitvid let me upload the whole video.
The W. Edwards Deming Institute has posted Dr. Deming’s 1984 video on the 5 deadly diseases of western management.
Dr. Deming added 2 diseases to reach his famous 7 deadly diseases: excessive medical care costs and excessive legal damage awards swelled by lawyers working on contingency fees.
Personally I believe all 7 of those diseases are still prevalent and causing damage. I do think some progress has been made on longer term thinking but far too many organizations still are extremely short term focused. And I would add two new deadly diseases of management: excessive executive compensation and an outdated intellectual property system.
Related: Deming Companies – Purpose of an Organization – Continual Improvement – Creating Jobs – New Management Truths Sometimes Started as Heresies
When Economic Incentives Backfire by Samuel Bowles, Sante Fe Institute
Punished by Rewards, by Alfie Kohn, is a great book on this topic. The area of “motivating” employees is one it is often hard for managers to learn. Even managers that have been studying Deming, Ackoff, Ohno… for years still have trouble with the idea that trying to find the right incentive scheme to motivate the right behavior is the wrong approach. Read the The Human Side Of Enterprise by Douglas Mcgregor (in 1960) to re-enforce the understanding of human motivation provided by Toyota’s respect for people principles.
Managers need to eliminate de-motivation in the work systems not try and find bonus schemes to motivate behavior. Eliminating de-motivation is often much more work. You can’t just get some money from the bonus pool and start giving it away. You have to manage. But if you are a manager you shouldn’t be afraid to actually manage the system and make it better.
Related: “Pay for Performance” is a Bad Idea – Reward and Incentive Programs are Ineffective — Even Harmful by Peter Scholtes – The Defect Black Market – What’s the Value of a Big Bonus? – Problems with Bonuses – Losses Covered Up to Protect Bonuses – Stop Demotivating Employees
The Trouble with Performance Reviews by Jeffrey Pfeffer
The most basic problem is that performance appraisals often don’t accurately assess performance. More than two decades ago research done by professor David Schoorman showed that whether or not the supervisor had hired or inherited her employees was a better predictor of evaluation results than actual job performance.
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Possibly the biggest issue, however, is that performance appraisals focus managers’ attention on precisely the wrong thing: individual people. As W. Edwards Deming, the father of the quality movement, taught a long time ago, company performance often results more from variations in systems than from the individuals doing the work. One of the reasons Toyota Motor has been so successful for decades—even as leaders have come and gone and the automobile market has changed—is that the fundamentals of the Toyota management system, which emphasizes quality, continuous improvement, and standardized tasks, provide the advantage. By focusing on the presumed deficiencies or strengths of people, individual performance reviews divert attention from the important task of eliminating the systemic causes, such as inferior technology, behind poor performance.
Another good article pointing out the harm of annual performance reviews. As I have said many times managers need to do better. See chapter 9 of the Leader’s Handbook and previous posts: Don’t Use Performance Appraisals – – Deming and Performance Appraisal – Find the Root Cause Instead of the Person to Blame – Performance Without Appraisal
Dr. Deming used the red bead experiment to present a view into management practices and his management philosophy. The experiment provides insight into all four aspects of Dr. Deming’s management system: understanding variation, understanding psychology, systems thinking and the theory of knowledge.
Red Bead Experiment by Steve Prevette
Related: Fooled by Randomness – Performance Measures and Statistics Course – Performance without Appraisal – Exploring Deming’s Management Ideas – Eliminate Slogans
Get Rid of the Performance Review! by Samuel Culbert
As I have said numerous times, I agree with Deming that management by performance appraisals doesn’t work. Most people seem to realize they are fake, cause harm, and do little if any good. But they continue to act as though it is impossible to stop activities that cause harm and provide no significant benefit.
Related: Righter Performance Appraisal – Performance without Appraisal – Deming and Performance Appraisal – Problems Caused by Performance Appraisal
More and more people are willing to state the frustration with the performance appraisal process. Some have been willing to take the logical step of eliminating that which causes problems but many still don’t think elimination of performance appraisals is acceptable. Performance Reviews: Many Need Improvement
I would go with the elimination of performance appraisals, myself (see related links below for details). I strongly suggest chapter 9 (Performance Without Appraisal) of The Leader’s Handbook, by Peter Scholtes, for those thinking about this topic.
Related: Don’t Use Performance Appraisals – Continuous, Constructive Feedback – Performance Appraisals – Is Good Execution the Solution? – Performance Without Appraisal
Gojko Adzic provides a nice post on Mary Poppendieck’s presentation at Agile 2008 on bonus, compensation and motivation: Paying programmers: are bonuses bad and what to do about it?
As usually Mary Poppendieck provides good advice: Mary Poppendieck webcast on Leadership in Software Development. The idea that bonuses are bad management is one of the more difficult management improvement ideas for people to accept. See related posts for much more on the problems with them and what to do instead.
Related: Interview with Mary Poppendieck – The Defect Black Market – Deming on the problems with targets or goals – Incentive Programs are Ineffective – Problems with Bonuses – Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations
Pay for performance is a bad investment by Pete Waters
As Deming said (page 102 of Out of the Crisis): “The idea of a merit rating is alluring. The sound of the words captivates the imagination: pay for what you get; get what you pay for; motivate people to do their best, for their own good. The effect is exactly the opposite of what the words promise.” Understanding enough about managing organizations to know why it doesn’t work is not easy – which I think is a big reason why people go for the nice sounding, but flawed idea, I think. Read our posts on performance appraisals and the works we reference to learn.
Guest post by Ron Kingen (originally posted to the Deming Electronic Network)
Several weeks ago someone in the DEN list ask what did Dr. Deming recommend about this issue, well I ask that very question of Dr. Deming back in the 80’s when I had the good fortune to work with him. I had expressed my concern to Dr. Deming about several of his fourteen points that I either didn’t understand completely or did not fit with my experience and/or education. Dr. Deming suggested we talk about it over dinner – during the subsequent dinner discussion Dr. Deming made several points relative to performance improvement (not appraisal):
The advice seemed valid, but I told him my company insisted we do performance appraisals. He laughed, he suggested I change the system; but Dr. Deming knew I worked for General Motors and that wouldn’t be easy. So he recommended I become a rebel and change my part of the system; which I did try. At the time I worked for one of the most progressive divisions within GM and was fortunate to work with many talented GM people and several well know and recognized experts, but I was convinced the best system change option was to leave GM.
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I think these orders of magnitude are not present in between people in many jobs. And I think people’s ability to correctly access who are orders of magnitude better is often faulty. But my experience leads me to believe the difference between exceptional software developers and average (not even below average) is very high. High enough that large increases in pay (say tripling would be sensible). Also accommodating their desires is sensible: freedom from dealing with pointy haired bosses and eliminating other such de-motivators.
While salespeople seen as successful can often be rewarded very well, exceptional software developers rarely are. Most managers don’t seem to be able to grasp that software development is a rare field where such orders of magnitude differences are somewhat common (not one in a million, maybe one in a thousand for a random guess). There are other fields where this is true but most for most fields I do not think this is the case.
In many fields interruptions are costly (and multi-taking is wasteful). In software development those interruptions are often much more costly than in other fields. Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams is an excellent book on managing software development.
Related: People are Our Most Important Asset – Joy in Software Development – Hiring the Right People – Performance without Appraisal – Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations
I like to continue to push for some things that might not seem achievable to many. It is too easy to accept that things have to stay the way they are. Several of Dr. Deming’s list of Seven Deadly Management Diseases are now accepted as serious problems by most. Performance appraisal is a strange disease: most people agree performance appraisals are not effective and indeed are harmful. Yet, most still don’t think anything can be done about it. But we can, and should, take steps to improve. Just don’t do it.
Managers are from Mars, Performance Appraisals from Venus discusses Mary Poppendieck’s recent presentation – Appraisals and Compensation: The Elephant in the Room
Mary went over the false assumptions behind individual pay-for-performance (money, motivation, individual assessment), and the negative effects they have on the system.
She finished by a case study done by HP across 13 organizations over a year 4 year period where each division implemented a different type of incentive plan. The results are just mind boggling. They all failed and got canceled.
I strongly suggest chapter 9 (Performance Without Appraisal) of The Leader’s Handbook, by Peter Scholtes, for those thinking about this topic.
Related: Righter Performance Appraisal – Problems Caused by Performance Appraisal – Performance Without Appraisal – Find the Root Cause Instead of the Person to Blame
Appraisals are a waste of Time
The poll of nearly 3,000 workers also found a quarter who had had an appraisal suspected their managers simply saw the annual review as a “tick-box” exercise. And a fifth complained managers rarely prepared for the meeting in advance – a key bit of advice you’ll always get in appraisal training – and did not even think about it until they were actually sat down in the room.
That is just a start on the problems with annual rating of people. On page 101 of Out of the Crisis Dr. W. Edwards Deming states the following as one of the seven deadly diseases:
Related: Dr. Deming on performance appraisal – Continuous, Constructive Feedback – Performance without Appraisal – Righter Performance Appraisal – The Leader’s Handbook
I am not convinced of the premise of The new war for talent: that there will be a great shortage of talent soon. But the article makes some interesting points.
I think the main thing to do is to respect employees (and have that visible in the management decisions made in the organization). Stopping the demotivation would be a big step for many organizations. And to manage your organization with the understanding that the organization’s purpose should be to benefit the various stakeholders (shareholders, customer… and employees).
Related: People are Our Most Important Asset – How to Improve – What is Wrong with MBA’s – soul crushing work (comic)
Targets can seriously damage your health by Simon Caulkin
To focus on the individual parts and ignore the whole always makes things function worse at a system-wide level. Thus, to meet financial and waiting-time targets, Maidstone drove up bed occupancy rates. But that compromised cleaning. At the system-wide level, the cost was making the hospital more dangerous to patients than staying at home.
And if enough pressure is applied, people will meet targets – even if they destroy the organisation in doing so. As quality guru W Edwards Deming put it: ‘What do “targets” accomplish? Nothing. Wrong: their accomplishment is negative.’
These are systemic faults, which is why such regimes can’t be refined by setting ‘better’ or fewer targets. Deming added: ‘Management by numerical goal is an attempt to manage without knowledge of what to do’. This is what makes it so attractive to bad managers. Unfortunately, in absolving them from the effort of thought, it is also junk management
Great insight on the problem of targets. Brian Joiner provides another reason why targets are harmful: there are “3 ways to improve the figures: distort the data, distort the system and improve the system. Improving the system is the most difficult.” And so most often targets results in distortion of the data (faulty data) or distortion of the system (meet target by shifting resources and effort from other parts of the system). Both of those actions are harmful to the system.
Related: Be Careful What You Measure – Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations – Targets Distorting the System
Comment on: Fun With Statistics, CEO Life Edition
Another useful comparison would be with Japan where top decisions tend to be much more based upon consensus and not as dependent on the American Superstar model.
Wouldn’t being “less and less critical to the long-term success of the organization” make it more and more difficult to justify salaries that would make a King jealous? If the USA CEO’s are less critical why are the USA CEO’s paid the highest (and most unbelievable crazy) amounts? I have thought for years CEO pay in the USA has nothing to do with their “worth,” this seems one more piece of evidence for that belief.
Today, in the USA, CEOs are basically win the lottery when they start and then either win some more and stay or don’t win and are let go. The lottery performance appraisal aspect Deming talked about (rewarding whoever random variation or macro economic and micro economic trends smiled upon during the period). So if a market (housing, oil, steel, investment banking, microchip, hotel…) is booming why give all the CEO’s in that market huge payoffs? What do they have to do with the economic boom in the entire market? Why pay them a lottery sized payout when a boom occurs? Occasionally a CEO may help make decisions that position the company to take advantage of a predicted boom particularly well (such a case could at least trigger a discussion on the worth of that action).
We also have to recalibrate Deming’s comments to say regular performance appraisal raffle winners. CEO’s are now actually getting $40,000,000 – lottery sized – annual pay so using the term lottery is a bit misleading for everyone else. The same issue hold though rewarding people for what is often just micro factors similar to the macro factors listed above for CEOs.
Warren Buffett on overpaid CEO’s:
Related: Deming on performance appraisal – Excessive Executive Pay – Obscene CEO Pay – No Excessive Senior Executive Pay at Toyota
The Seven Fatal Flaws of Performance Measurement by Joseph F. Castellano, Saul Young, and Harper A. Roehm
Once the targets are established, most organizations measure the performance of component units by comparing targets to actual performance for certain time periods. Variances from expected results are noted and explanations are required. The popular business press trumpets the efficacy of the above approach, but this methodology has serious flaws. In fact, the design and use of performance measurement systems in most organizations suffer from a number of fatal flaws that can undermine an organization’s ability to use its measurement system to improve processes and make better decisions.
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The proper role of measurements should be seen in the context of helping employees connect with the overall aim of the organization. Management must gather and analyze information that will help employees become better contributors to the firm’s purpose.
The articles does an excellent job of explaining the flaws in how performance measurement is applied (both in Management by Objective (MBO) and performance appraisals).
Related: Performance Without Appraisal – Jeffrey Pfeffer on Evidence-Based Practices – Problems Caused by Performance Appraisal – The Danger of Forgetting the Proxy Nature of Data
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