Open feedback

Do you think there are some good people in your organization and some so unwanted people. On top of that the unwanted are more prevalent than those better ones. How do you share your feedback for these people on a platform for their supervisor, his/her supervisor and HR to see it all. Obviously, you can't put that up on the intranet notice board.

How about, an open feedback system. Just log-in and search for the fellow colleague and share your feedback. Could be on a certain scale or just plain subjective description. Like may be an over all rating or detailed rating on certain traits expected from their jobs. Well, it could increase the scope of performance review, although it could have it's challenges too.

There could be of course some checks added, to ensure a more sane system, unlike a Face book group where every one bashes every one else.

- You may not be allowed to provide feedback for people 2 levels above you. I guess somehow we always see very little of those people and assume too much in framing our understanding. Hence, barred from putting those assumed understandings on
paper.
- You must have worked with your fellow colleague for minimum X number of days or have had certain valuable amount of interaction to be able to provide the feedback.
- Feedback will be viewable only to supervisor, reviewer and HR.
- It could also be kept anonymous to all except HR. So that it can be revealed only in critical cases.
- This could have certain weight in the over all appraisal scores of an individual.
- And of course a complex algorithm to convert the feedback into scores by identifying keywords from feedback provided with predefined scores for such key words.

Though it may sound so much like a cliche process again, but imagine kicking the butts of those unwanted people, on the system and actually letting the feedback translate into some action(may be).

Till then may be only cribbing helps.

Consistency galore

How do you measure someone's consistency? You make them do the same task again and again and monitor the outcome. If the the outcome is more or less same everytime, you consider the person to be consistent.

In case you are thinking what could be the task - I say, write CAT every year. Why ? because I write it every year. Here is the consistency part of it - I have now appeared in CAT for 6 times in a row(not a small feat). How many people do you know, who have done the same? I am pretty liberal and I assume may be a few. But, how many people among that score the same percentile year after year - same 2 digit figure. I have done that and now I ask you again how many people you know who have done that?

With CAT scores out on Sunday, if there was one percentile I was not expecting to score it was X. There is only 1/100 probability of scoring X. the probability of scoring the same X 2 times is 1/10,000. Ok now coming to the point - scoring that same percentile X in 4 out of 6 times in CAT is 4/6 and in percentile is 1/10,00,00,000. Thats better than six sigma. Becuase the probability of error in 6 sigma is 1/10,00,000. So is scoring the same percentile in CAT 4 times is more difficult to achieve than six sigma ?

Anyways, what ever the case be? In case you know me then I can challenge that you dont know any one else who has done the same, so be proud of your self that you know me.

And in case if you do know someone who has scored same percentile in CAT for 4 times then please drop me his/her email ID - would like to go out on a drink with him/her and discuss how and why CAT format should be totally re-done.

Enough of CAT posts. May be next time I will write on something better.

Boosted by CAT performance consistency, I will apply to Toyota soon to rescue them from their recent quality issues due to which they had to re-call thousands of cars.

Projecting performance.

Recently a friend of mine was unhappy with his appraisal as he thinks he deserved more because of good amount of hard work he had put in. Well that probably is a case with most of the employees these days especially in IT companies because of the inflating salaries causing huge expectations.

My suggestion to him was "it could be possible that your boss does not know how exactly you are putting in a lot of effort and you must focus not only on the effort but also on the visualization of that effort to the concerned person(boss)". This in other words means projecting the work done is as important as doing the work.

Here is one good example.

"The Taj Group of Hotels once faced a peculiar business problem. The mirror in the hotels’ bathrooms became misty after a hot shower and people invariably used a towel to wipe off the mist to see their face. So, Taj put a heat source behind the mirrors, which prevented the mist from forming. But when customers were asked what they felt about the change in the mirrors, they hadn’t even noticed it. Then Taj came up with the idea of putting the heat source only on a square portion of the mirrors, which showed the face of people. Mist was allowed to settle on the remaining parts of the mirror. The customers found this really innovative"

Found this example on agencyfaqs as a part of Harish Bijoor article. I think it is an excellent example of what is done may not be noticed as long as it is not planned accordingly. This stands equally true @ work as well.

It is not that your supervisor wants you to chase them all day to serve them in sycophancy but then you are not the only one whom he supervises and just as you don't know what all he does in those 9-12 hours he is at work, he may not know about you either. Though you not knowing enough about his efforts does not matter but vice versa will impact you. So keep this in mind when you go in for an appraisal next time.

Anyways no matter what your supervisor gives you, it will not be sufficient for long enough! isn't it ?