Tag Archives: Performance Appraisal

Deming and Performance Appraisal

Posted on April 22, 2008 by John Hunter

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 … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Performance Appraisal, Systems thinking | Tagged Deming, guest post, Performance Appraisal | 1 Comment

Performance Appraisals are Worse Than a Waste of Time

Posted on December 13, 2007 by John Hunter

Appraisals are a waste of Time Most British workers will certainly leave their appraisal fired up and motivated, but only to look for a new job, new research from workplace and HR body Investors in People has concluded. Nearly half of those who had an appraisal did not trust their managers to be honest during it, with a third dismissing the annual chat as a waste of time and a fifth leaving it feeling they had been unfairly treated. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Respect | Tagged Deming, Performance Appraisal, respect for people, system thinking, UK | 4 Comments

Continuous, Constructive Feedback

Posted on June 7, 2007 by John Hunter

Employee performance: Continuous, constructive feedback yields results [the broken link was removed]: Be specific. If you simply say “Good job, Frank,” Frank won’t know exactly what he did to get that atta boy. Therefore, he can’t consciously work to repeat that behavior. Instead, say something like “Frank, that new procedure you developed for handling service calls has really improved customer satisfaction. Thanks for coming up with it.” Include coaching. Annual reviews often are used as the only performance communication tool. … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Respect | Tagged managing people, Performance Appraisal, Psychology | 4 Comments

Performance Appraisals Performance

Posted on February 21, 2007 by John Hunter

Appraising the Performance Of Performance Appraisals [the link that IEEE broke was removed] by Harry Goldstein: The traditional annual review covers a lot of ground: coaching and guidance for the employee, feedback and communication, compensation, staffing decisions and professional development, legal documentation, and ultimately, improvement for both the employee and the organization. According to Jenkins and Coens, all of the above can be done better and far less painfully by untangling these functions and designing a process for each. First, … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Respect | Tagged Deming, Performance Appraisal, Psychology

Performance Appraisals – Is Good Execution the Solution?

Posted on January 15, 2007 by John Hunter

Performance review proponents say the way it is done matters most[the broken link was removed] (based on reaction to: Performance appraisals get low marks[the broken link was removed]): Deming, it seems, has many fans. His view of performance reviews? He included them in his catalog of the “seven deadly diseases” afflicting U.S. management in the late 20th Century. Byrne referred to Deming when he wrote: “The ‘report card’ type of yearly review [does] more harm than good. Review the person … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Performance Appraisal, Systems thinking | Tagged Deming, managing people, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Systems thinking | 3 Comments

How to Prevent Innovation

Posted on December 19, 2006 by John Hunter

Top ten tips for preventing innovation give some great ideas many companies are already doing but you may find some your company hasn’t mastered 🙂 For example: Make performance reviews easy. Create some easy-to-measure metrics (like # of sick-days taken, # of powerpoint slides created, # of meetings attended), and use those for performance reviews. People always gravitate toward the metric. We can run the reviews with a minimum of effort, giving us more time to tell them how to … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Innovation, Management, Performance Appraisal | Tagged Innovation, Performance Appraisal | 1 Comment

What is Wrong with MBA’s

Posted on November 2, 2006 by John Hunter

Two interesting posts from Compound Thinking: What is Management? [the broken link was removed – this is one of many examples of a good blog’s domain lapsing and being bought by someone to promote unrelated items.]: Management is helping others become great. Well said. As Deming would say management’s responsibility is to work on improving the system (to allow everyone in the system to do great work). This encompasses a wide variety of things, including: creating sensible hiring processes designing … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Education, Management | Tagged Education, Management, organization as a system, Performance Appraisal | 4 Comments

Righter Performance Appraisal

Posted on October 9, 2006 by John Hunter

Speaking of “doing the wrong things righter” Microsoft has eliminated forced rankings in performance appraisal: to do performance appraisals righter. Microsoft exec puts her stamp on human resources: The forced curve was company policy. And it climbed up a list of employee gripes that grew as Microsoft’s stock, which accounts for much of the company’s compensation, languished. In May, after barely a year as Microsoft’s human-resources chief, Lisa Brummel swept away “artifacts of the past,” starting with the widely disliked … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Systems thinking | Tagged Deming, managing people, organization as a system, Performance Appraisal, respect for people | 1 Comment

Incentive Programs are Ineffective

Posted on September 19, 2006 by John Hunter

Reward and Incentive Programs are Ineffective — Even Harmful by Peter Scholtes The greatest management conceit is that we can “motivate” people. We can’t. Motivation is there, inside people. Our people were motivated when we hired them and everyday, when they come to work, they arrive with the intention of doing a good job. Managers cannot motivate. They can, however, de-motivate. Herzberg established this over 30 years ago (Herzberg, Frederick “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?” Harvard Business … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Psychology, Respect | Tagged Management, organization as a system, Performance Appraisal, Peter Scholtes, respect for people | 1 Comment

Signs You Have a Great Job … or Not

Posted on June 1, 2006 by John Hunter

Signs you have a great job … or not by Jeanne Sahadi This article, while presenting an overly simplistic view in my opinion, actually provides some good reminders. The article focuses on 12 questions that seem to be the focus of a recent business book. And some of those questions provide good reminders to managers of things they should pay attention to, such as: Do I know what’s expected of me at work? At work, do I have the opportunity … Continue reading →

Posted in Career, Management, Management Articles, Performance Appraisal | Tagged Career, Management, Performance Appraisal | 4 Comments

Problems Caused by Performance Appraisal

Posted on May 17, 2006 by John Hunter

People are increasingly challenging the notion that we just have to live with performance appraisal systems. As usually, I will make my suggestion that chapter 9 of the Leader’s Handbook offers great material on performing without appraisal (and the rest of the book is great too). Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Management Articles, Performance Appraisal | Tagged Deming, evidence based management, Management, Performance Appraisal, respect for people | 2 Comments

Performance Appraisal Problems

Posted on February 15, 2006 by John Hunter

The Struggle To Measure Performance [the broken link was removed], Business Week: One company that recently decided to dump forced rankings altogether is Chemtura (CEM), a $3 billion specialty chemicals company formed by the July merger of Crompton in Middlebury, Conn., and Great Lakes Chemical in Indianapolis. “The system forced me to turn people who were excellent performers into people who were getting mediocre ratings,” says Eric Wisnefsky, Chemtura’s vice-president for corporate finance. “That demotivates them, and they’d follow up … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Management Articles, Performance Appraisal, Psychology | Tagged Deming, Management, Performance Appraisal | 3 Comments

Performance of People and Appraisal

Posted on December 5, 2005 by John Hunter

The Statistical and Scientific Thinking blog, by John Dowd, has several interesting posts on the Performance of People [the broken link was removed]: Why can’t performance be numerically rated and ranked? It can’t be defined operationally, it can’t be measured with any degree of precision, it can’t be separated from other effects, and it is destined to vary over time in any case. Any one of these factors present significant (if not insurmountable) problems itself. Combined the problems create an … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Respect | Tagged managing people, Performance Appraisal, Psychology

Deming’s Ideas at Markey’s Audio Visual

Posted on October 24, 2005 by John Hunter

Last week at the Deming Institute seminar: How to Create Unethical, Ineffective Organizations That Go Out of Business, Mark Miller, General Manager, Markey’s Audio Visual spoke on Markey’s experience adopting Deming’s ideas. It was a great presentation. He did a great job of explaining what it was like to work at a company focused on applying Deming’s management philosophy. I capture some of the points he talked about below. 1986 Markey’s started providing Audio Visual support to all Deming’s seminars. … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Deming, Management | Tagged business, commissions, Customer focus, Deming, Management, management system, Performance Appraisal | 6 Comments

Performance Without Appraisal

Posted on October 1, 2005 by John Hunter

In response to the Alternatives to Stack Ranking? post on the popular Mini-Microsoft blog. I’m also taking some time to contemplate on Deming’s points and assess how Microsoft is doing against them. … What I would deeply appreciate is real-world experience from people living with stack ranking alternatives. I strongly suggest chapter 9 (Performance Without Appraisal) of The Leader’s Handbooks, by Peter Scholtes. You mentioned Deming. When asked “If we eliminate performance appraisals, as you suggest, what do we do … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Performance Appraisal, Psychology, Respect | Tagged Deming, management, managing people, organization as a system, Performance Appraisal, Peter Scholtes, respect for people | 7 Comments

Failed Practice: Forced Ranking

Posted on August 19, 2005 by John Hunter

The ABCs of Rank and Fire Management [the broken link has been removed] by Mark Edmondson Due in part to the influence of GE, employee ranking has become more widely adopted over the past 20 years. According to a 2004 study, currently about 34 percent of firms rank employees. … Our clients have learned that a performance management system that reinforces a culture of engaged employees can be at tremendous competitive advantage. While at least one-third of your competitors are … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Management, Performance Appraisal | Tagged Performance Appraisal | 1 Comment