Running Agile

Yearly appraisals, ratings and rankings are devised to kill your teams.

For most teams, each person’s achievement is all commingled with the other members of the team. Trying to pull out individual performance is futile. Emphasizing or rating individual performance undermines collaboration. Individual skills are only a small part of the performance equation anyway. The quality of management, the environment and organization culture are major factors in individual performance. And most rating and ranking schemes ignore those factors.

So appraisals, ratings and rankings engender unhealthy competition, not collaboration, not efficiency, not product success. Every company does it, but what good has this really done for you? Nothing! It’s really silly and makes no sense.

Oh wait, disabusing poor performers by letting them know they are at the bottom of the barrel will spur motivation and greater efforts, right? Most people believe they are above average performers so this accomplishes quite the opposite.

And when everyone does a great job on the team, what use is there telling someone they’re at the bottom?

The best time to really screw up is to provide people with a loose and uncanny review year end, or on their hiring date anniversary – how sentimental. Why waste a year, 6 months or even weeks and keep inadequate performance continue?

While appraisals do nothing at best, do let your people know how they are doing, in the present, as close to the event as feasible. Sweet and short. Direct and frequent.

Once in while, step back and look at your whole team. Manage your C players to another job, where they can be successful – within your company – or out. For everyone else, follow Esther Derby’s tips and engage them on these questions:

• What were the major events of the year?
• What have been the major accomplishments?
• What new skills have you acquired?
• What have been your struggles?
• What contributed to those situations?
• What insights do you have, looking back on the year?
• What are you most proud of?
• How does this inform us going into next year?
• What do you want to do better?
• Are there new areas you want to explore?
• What skills or capabilities will you develop?
• How can we build developing those capabilities into daily work?
• How will we tell you’re making progress?

Do not discuss a letter or number rating or ranking. Just talk.
Have a separate conversation about salary increases.

For more depth on on one one management, read Esther Derby‘s book Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management.

And if your company insists on annual appraisals, establish a system that that carries more weight on the team than the individual. Avoid ranking or skill set scoring. Instead, focus on the scope of influence someone has. I already wrote on how to do reviews in agile teams with Jeff Sutherland’s review process. You should also consider teaching your teams how to rate themselves. Scary? most teams don’t inflate their own grades – unless the system drives that behavior.