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?