Comments on: The Honestly Subjective Performance Review (HSPR)

By: Nitin

Nitin — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 05:07:17 +0000

One team I had on their account, also did the process of peer feedback. The feedback was submitted to the manager. The rule here was, this was purely used for feedback from peers and not performance evaluations. It was anonymous, compiled by the manager and delivered to the employee. Was done once a year but never used for performance evaluations. It was a great feedback tool, without any threats.

By: Nitin

Nitin — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 05:03:40 +0000

Yes, I have been part of developing and delivering great reviews. It all depends on how the system is defined/used.
At one company I worked, performance reviews involved, discussing work/life balance, discusing next steps, career aspirations and documenting it in separate steps as a part of the review. The discussion was about the employee, the company and how to align these. When you finally get to performance, you are able to look at past performance, future aspirations and plan developmental needs/feedback all in one sitting. Behaviour, not just results, accounted for 50% of the over all evaluation. So you were not allowed to be successful over a few dead bodies.

In the end, what I have to say, I have seen a few different tools in my career. It all comes down to how you look at it, how you intend to use it and how much are you willing to put into the process. Yes, it is cumbersome, but so is developing next round of leaders to keep the business going.

By: Mike Kelly’s blog » Blog Archive » Information Technology Dark Side

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 00:34:11 +0000

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Thu, 07 Dec 2006 11:46:07 +0000

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By: dave

dave — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 01:08:56 +0000

Excellent question, Artem. I just wish you had finished your comment! I’m very curious what you had to say, but it seems incomplete.

At any rate, my experience with the HSPR is limited to the hiring process – these are forcibly subjective because you just don’t know enough about the candidate to do anything other than make an openly subjective call about the value you expect them to add in the future.

Like most IT folks, I have tons of experience with the dishonestly subjective performance review (the “objective” based review) and I know that it sucks.

Is there anyone out there who has been through a performance review that was future looking and openly subjective? I’d love to hear your story.

By: Artem

Artem — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 23:25:10 +0000

Do you have ANY practical experience of applying HSPR? At least partially

By: Mike Kelly

Mike Kelly — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 23:05:30 +0000

Fire them all!

No really. One of the things your post made me think of is that if you enter the performance review like an interview, you would again be evaluating future performance instead of past performance. While I’m not advocating actually firing people (that’s cool if you’re my manager but others might not deal with that as well as I would), I do think the mind set is valuable.

If performance reviews are backward looking when they should be forward looking, we need to find another way of thinking about what their purpose is. Are you simply evaluating bonuses? Then a backward looking review may be fine. Are you thinking about staffing future projects? Then you may want to think of everyone like you are interviewing them for the first time. Are you thinking about something else entirely and you just need to do the performance review so YOUR manager will leave you alone? Then it doesn’t matter what you do, most likely you are doomed either way.

If you can’t tell by me post, I’m bitter about the idea of annual performance reviews. It’s the number one reason I became a consultant. I prefer continuous feedback. The type you talk about in your Instant Feedback post and the type Rothman and Derby talk about in their book “Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management.” It’s one of the most de-motivating management practices I know of.