The Ranking System
Rob Enderle points out in his post “Why Layoffs Should be Avoided” on IT Business Edge:
Rankings are largely subjective and don’t take into account the health of the team. They also don’t take into account informal relationships between groups, executives, customers or the inherent value of the knowledge the employee has. And people certainly aren’t ranked according to their real value to the company. How would you even calculate that?
He’s right. How do we as leaders rank performance? How can we find the right balance between the measurable and the unmeasurable achievements, between the subjective and the objective?
We are all playing the game one way or another and I think that’s fine but how do we make it a fair game for all? Can we? Or is there too much at stake?
To a great extent, I think it starts with trust and as Rob points out:
Trust is so hard to build and shouldn’t be sacrificed so easily.
But can it all be left to trust? Doesn’t trust make it subjective?
My take: We must trust the system but the system itself cannot be built on trust. Goals needs to be specific and measurable. Ranking needs to be justifiable without prejudice, without emotions, purely on results.
The question I will leave you with is: How do we build such a system?
about 1 month ago
Raj,
My response will be – why do you have to be part of the system? Anyone who follows the system have never really created something of their own. You can choose how much of the system you would like to soak in and work with it. Or you can create your own. After a while it becomes accepted and is the system.
Leaders create their system. If you want to rank it- like how much knowledge do you have- I thinks its very subjective, don’t you?
If you have to- I think getting more inputs from people as they use the system for the first 10 days or 10 seconds (measurable against a standard) and working with it might help.
We tend to accept certain things like Google Page Rank (PR) may be but if I have lesser PR than xyz site, it can depend on numerous factors.
So, if I have to fire anyone from my team- how do I decide? Based on factors I think I can measure everybody against but at the same time its not fair. Why do we always assume we know everyone’s potential?
We judge based on what we think we see, not what they are!
about 1 month ago
Raj,
Interesting thing, I was part of a mass layoff following an acquisition seven years ago. There was no ranking – just the acquiring company’s desire to get rid of excess cost and “redundant jobs”. I think your post brings up a good point and wonder if the company in this case would have done any better if they ranked before the layoffs. I don’t think so.
Evaluating performance is always subjective. Human emotions come into play here; we feel a connection with some of our employees and not with others. There is no denying it. Subjective decisions are made all th time based on our emotional connections.
about 1 month ago
Rob Enderle says that using a ranking system will end up laying people off because a “lack of a college education typically would rank them lower than peers”. What sort of system is that? As managers, we can choose to apply this kind of mindless criteria that will result in not keeping the best candidates. But we could look at other factors – if layoffs are necessary at all.
about 1 month ago
Thank you all for your comments. This is a topic which I wanted to get many different perspectives on. Depending on where we are or what part we play in our own “system”, we react differently.
@Elizabeth: I agree that a system that ranks on education alone isn’t a good system and I hope there are fewer such orgs out there who have that mentality. While Rob’s post talks a lot about layoffs and less about the ranking system or its criteria, I was prompted to delve more into the topic with this post.
@mjasmus: Mass layoffs are nothing but a bad plan gone haywire. Those who did get laid off from such an org, I would consider lucky. One performs well in an env that’ll trust your abilities and provides you with opportunities. On the note on evaluating performance, should it all be subjective? How can we change or minimize that?
@soma: I think we are part of a system one way or another. Managers do have the power to create or change a system for the better. Communication, customer satisfaction, etc are some examples of truly subjective skills that are usually not considered or given less weight age while ranking but Knowledge can be measured. You are absolutely right. While I think ranking is important for growth, the system must surely have a good feedback mechanism built in.