Should We Ditch “Traditional” Performance Reviews?
Performance reviews can turn into the bane of one’s life either as an appraisee or appraiser.
As leaders, part of our job is to encourage our team to be the “best they can”. Equally, anyone with ambition wants to improve their performance and make themselves more valuable. Yes, there are people who are “happy where they are” but others want to see how far they can push their personal boundaries.
The problem with performance reviews was that they’ve been through a cycle of being:
- Annual events to…
- Quarterly events to…
- One-on-one periodic sessions
To make things more complex, there’s a feeling that the more complex the performance review process is, the more “scientific” it must be. From performance metrics to behavioural trait assessments to 360° peer reviews, everything is thrown into the proverbial pot. This makes them an ordeal for both appraisers and appraisees.
What finally seems to matter in most cases is whether the appraisee “gets on” with their peers, their juniors, their bosses and their bosses’ bosses. The risk here is that competence becomes less important as people spend more time “fudging” their results and playing politics.
The move now seems to be more towards a more organic, practical process of on-the-spot feedback positive and negative), acknowledging success in team meetings and through company email or private check-in when needed. Some feel that this makes them faster, more honest and connects them more as a team whilst at the same time freeing them up for more actual work.
How the process described above operates, I don’t know. I suspect there still must be a degree of “getting on” with others but, at the very least, one doesn’t have to wait until the end of the year to receive a potentially “nasty surprise” when one thinks one has done well but it turns out that nobody else (for whatever reason) is of the same opinion.
Is the “traditional performance appraisal” a relic of the past? In some ways, perhaps yes. However, appraisal is still very much a live topic. My view? If the team enjoys working together and produces results, they’re effective and that deserves a good appraisal.
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email.
Labels: Career, Leadership, Strategy, Teamwork
Is "Ageism" Real?
“Ageism” can be defined as “bias or prejudice against people over a certain age who are treated unfairly as a result”.
The problem is that individual views on what constitutes and “older” person differ. Nowadays, people live longer, generally retain their physical and mental health longer and can be productive workers for longer than in the past thanks to advances in technology and medical science.
We’ve seen examples of ageism: “humorous” birthday cards mocking older people which impact others’ views come to mind in particular. The disparaging “OK Boomer!” response to anyone older giving advice is also common. This results in a number of consequences including job prospects for all the people
Examples people have experience include:
- Being patronised.
- Losing or not being hired for a job because of your age.
- Being refused credit, car insurance, travel insurance.
- Low quality of service in shops or restaurants.
- Being refused membership to clubs or associations because of age.
Some employers won’t hire people over a certain age on the grounds that they’re “too old” and may require more time off, more healthcare, more pay, may be slower and a variety of other reasons. In some cases, this may be true, but perhaps no truer than for younger counterparts with the new diagnosed medical conditions that require special consideration or allowances. These seem to have impacted less on their ability to find work.
The proliferating number of “conditions” requiring special care or conditions of work is increasing. The case for discriminating against older people however they’re defined, is at best, weak.
Let’s consider some of the advantages of hiring an “older” worker:
- They have life experience that their younger counterparts lack, enabling them to solve problems younger ones can’t.
- They have “human skills” that again many of their younger counterparts lack.
- They’re likely to be more patient when confronted with adverse situations.
In short, discriminating against older people because of their age is just as unacceptable as discriminating against people based on gender, race, religion, orientation, political views etc.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if “reverse ageism”, where people discriminated against younger people again because of their age, suddenly made an appearance?
As business leaders, it’s our job to ensure we hire only the best, no matter their age. "Inclusivity" starts with us!
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email.
Labels: Career, Leadership, Productivity, Social, Strategy, Teamwork
Telephone Queues
A posting appeared in LinkedIn about the newly installed ATM on the island of Tuvalu. Whilst the author could imagine delighted bank customers no longer having to queue for cash at the bank’s counters, she highlighted one of the problems of technology’s impact on our society.
Her concern revolved around “customer service” and how, in an effort to save costs, companies are turning more and more to technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide for customer needs. I’ve been using ATMs for longer than I can remember; supermarkets now have self-service checkouts (which often seem to have a problem one way or the other, requiring a supervisor to still be in attendance) and other organisations are now "training up" AI to answer customer telephone queries.
The point? Face-to-face, human interaction is becoming less frequent. For some, their weekly trip to the supermarket may be the only chance they have to talk to a “real person” when they pay for their goods at checkout.
More frustrating however, were the author’s experiences of calling a “customer helpline” only to be faced with a myriad of button press choices in order to locate the service they wanted and then either waiting “on hold“ for ages, being cut off or forced to go back to stage one to repeat a menu which didn’t seem to cater for their particular issue.
Despite the hype, human interaction is still critical and AI is not the solution to a business’ financial woes.
Despite the efforts of technology companies, humans still need human interaction and the intuitive leaps that only a human can make to solve their problems.
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email.
Labels: Customer Care, Productivity, Social
“Cognitive Overhead”
I came across one of the most informative and clear explanations I’ve ever encountered about why customers may not always react the way we hope they will. It’s called “Cognitive Overhead”.
Simply put, it’s how much they have to think and/or do something to take action to get something. The easiest way to understand this is to think about two simple examples:
The words “click below to subscribe”.
The word “subscribe” used as a direct link (known as a “Uniform Resource Locator” or URL) to a page to fill in details.
In the first case, a customer reads the instruction and then must find a link somewhere below (maybe lower than the part of the screen they can see). In the second, they simply click on the word “Subscribe”. This may seem simple but the fact is that the first example requires two steps whilst the second only requires one.
If we imagine our processes in a similar way, how many steps do customers have to go through to obtain a product or service through our website? There will be a minimum number, but the question is how low will that be?
Sometimes customers have commented that they didn’t follow a process through because it was either:
- “Too long”
- “Too complicated”
- “Unintuitive” or
- All of the above.
If the third (let alone the last) answer comes back too often, our business has a serious problem. All it’ll take is one competitor with processes that are shorter, less complicated more “intuitive” or all three to take our customers from us.
As an example, my wife and I have both found that installing eSIMs from a certain provider comes under the “all three” category. We’ve given up using their eSIM.
As businesses, we need to minimise the “cognitive overhead” for our customers. As technology and complexity grow in our world, this is going to become harder. Developers need to understand how the customer works and how to blend this with how their business works.
The first question we should always be asking ourselves is, “Will this process benefit the customer?”. If the answer is “not much” then we shouldn’t institute it. People will try to justify complex processes for reasons like “legal requirements”, “regulations”, or similar. All businesses are subject to rules, but building processes around these rules or around what the business needs isn’t the way to go.
In short, “the simpler the better” is the way to go. Our problem is, how do we get there?
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email.
Labels: Customer Care, Productivity, Selling, Strategy
24/7 Service?
I recently used a UK bank’s “24/7” online messaging service to help resolve a problem.
To be fair, when I initiated the conversation, my location was eight hours ahead of the UK. The AI or automatic agent did respond immediately but, once it became clear that my needs required “human intervention” it needed to pass me to one of its “human” colleagues.
The system very kindly advised that it might take up to 30 minutes for a “human” to contact me. This may have been for several reasons including high numbers of enquiries. Unfortunately, I didn’t have 30 minutes to wait online whilst the “system” dealt with me.
I’ve no complaints about the “virtual agent” (read AI bot) being used. After all, this bank has probably discovered that many queries can be answered through AI. The problem comes when one does need human intervention.
My question: if you advertise a service as 24/7, is the customer entitled to assume that:
It does indeed function 24/7?
They will receive “human intervention” in a timely manner?
In my opinion, a 30-minute delay isn’t “timely”. I might just as well have called their hotline and resolved the issue within five minutes if it had been “time sensitive”. As luck would have it, it wasn’t.
AI is being touted as the answer to everything. However, it still has a long way to go as we can see from the above example. Ironically, the reason I was forced to contact the so-called 24/7 service was because I had received a message from that bank which told me I would be able to use its internet banking service or mobile app to apply. Unfortunately, the message didn’t include precise instructions on the steps required.
I fully understand that one must assume a basic level of “intelligence” in people from time to time. The problem is that every bank’s internet banking service (and other non-banking services) are laid out differently by people who follow their own logic in terms of website or app design as well as local regulations. What may be “intuitive” to one person may not be to the next.
In short, if we as businesses offer a “24/7 service”, we need to make sure it’s a full service that responds to all customer needs. This means that, as leaders, we need to test our systems to ensure they’re fit for purpose and do “what it says on the tin”.
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email.
Labels: Customer Care, Productivity, Strategy
Harmful Devices?
I’m sitting in a clinic’s reception area waiting for an appointment. Behind me is a young child (obviously waiting with other) for an appointment whilst watching some kind of children’s programme on mother’s smartphone to keep them amused (and quiet?).
My question is, what’s this doing to the child’s development? Before smartphones and their ability to deliver on-the-spot gratification, what did we do? Answer: if we knew we were in for a long wait, we brought a book, books of puzzle games, drawing books, caught up with our journals or any other activity that engaged our minds.
These days, one sees very few instances of this. Instead, it’s mind-dulling activity potentially robbing us of future generations of artists, musicians, creators, authors and the like.
The trouble is, it’s too easy to hand them a smartphone to keep them quiet.
What if we engaged them in conversation, played games (that didn’t require running around) instead? If we’re “dumbing down” their minds at this stage, small wonder people complain of educational standards also being “dumbed down.
Now we’ve got “Artificial Intelligence” - what about dealing with “Natural Dumbness” first? Is Ai the natural response to instant gratification?
We’re continually told we need the “skills” to react to a “fast-changing world”, but developing these skills starts when we’re young with conditioning the mind.
More interaction, less “camer-action”?
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email.
Labels: Social
The Importance of Deadlines
Our lives are about getting things done – either by ourselves or (as leaders) through others.
One of the aspects of leadership and task management that receives less attention than it deserves is setting deadlines. We’ve probably heard the phrase “they want it done yesterday!” meaning that (senior management - or whoever) want something done as soon as possible.
Not setting deadlines has a significant impact on how people prioritise. If the deadline’s close, they’ll put it at the top of their list. The human mind naturally focuses on tasks with deadlines versus tasks without. As a result, they prioritise what’s “urgent” but not always “important”. This phenomenon has been well documented in what’s known as the Eisenhower Matrix which provides a graphic representation of the differences on how we should handle tasks that are:
- “Urgent and important”
- “Urgent but not important”
- “Important but not urgent”
- “Neither urgent nor important”
We tend to focus on the “urgent” tasks, whether they’re “important” or not at the expense of the “important but not (yet) urgent” tasks.
Setting deadlines is vital to all our activities as leaders. Some leaders are excellent at giving deadlines for every task delegated (and sometimes the deadline is even realistic!). Others, however, just describe the task but not when they need it done. A week later they come back asking “why haven’t you done it?” Or “is it ready yet?” Of course, the person to whom the task was delegated may well answer in the negative as they didn’t realise that that task needed to be completed within (say) a week.
Another practice I came across when delegating tasks was for a leader to say, “unless I say otherwise, I want things done within a week.” Giving this kind of guidance saves time on both sides.
Equally, we as team members need to get into the habit of asking “what’s the deadline?” if none is specified (and if our leader tends not to set deadlines).
My (unspoken) guideline for responses to emails that I send is latest seven days of the date of that email (unless I specify otherwise). I diarise to chase after a week, so that the recipient knows I’ll be keeping an eye on them. Is this fair? Perhaps not, but it does work for me and means that I stay “on top” of things.
A common email fault is people prefacing emails with “urgent” (often in capitals followed by two exclamation marks!!) The problem is that if this is their habit, recipients will realise very quickly that most messages from that person aren’t “urgent’ and won’t prioritise them in as such.
Setting expectations in terms of deadlines as a leader is critical to the smooth functioning of our team. New team members should be told that we expect them to respond to a delegated task within (say) one week unless specified otherwise. We should also be explaining to them that, if they run into problems, they should let us know so that we can arrange support.
Another issuing encountered was a team member’s perception that everyone else’s deadlines weren’t important (let alone urgent). It wasn’t until I explained that often, when I set them a deadline, it was so that information could be gathered to pass onto another senior manager who had to consolidate that information with other information before submitting it to a more senior manager within that senior manager’s deadlines. This resulted in a “lightbulb moment” for that colleague who’d clearly never considered this. Once they knew how to distinguish things that might be urgent and what their potential remedy was, they were able to plan their day as well.
I explained that if this person felt that the deadline was unrealistic, they should say so and explain why to allow us to ask for an extension if possible (or at the very least explain why meeting the deadline might result in substandard information being supplied).
Like “urgent” emails, this only works if it’s applied sparingly. If it becomes a habit, you’ll only gain a reputation of being disorganised, incapable, a poor planner, bad at prioritising or whatever people care to describe you as.
(Interestingly, I’ve observed that human beings also tend to meet deadlines which are important to them, aside from those that are perceived as urgent and imposed by others.)
I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management. I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email.
Labels: Career, Leadership, Productivity, Teamwork
