# Wasteful Performance Rating and Calibration By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2024-02-15 Managers within organizations spend a significant amount of time evaluating the performance of individuals. They create elaborate rating systems that try to measure things such as living the values, technical competence, teamwork, creativity, overcoming adversity, and potential. There are many issues with such systems, but let's say that rarely are they based on any coherent understanding of humans. When these well-intentioned rating systems fail to produce the intended results, managers are forced to create elaborate calibration systems to be more fair and balanced. For example, one manager might be an easy grader while another has higher expectations and rates everyone much lower. Many guidelines and meetings are required to normalize all the workers into no more than two dimensions, typically the goal of such sessions. The result of this is typically a list of high performers and low performers. The high performers are rewarded. The low performers are coached to improve or shown the door. However, are the elaborate and time-consuming rating and calibration sessions worth it? I suspect the same list of high and low performers could be ascertained via an anonymous 2-minute survey answered by everyone in the organization. One would only need to ask two questions. First, who do you work with that makes the most significant impact in the organization? Second, who are the people who don't pull their weight? Having sat in many performance rating and calibration sessions, I can definitively tell you that everyone knows the answer to these questions within their day-to-day work activities. So, why do managers create such elaborate systems when this approach is much more efficient and inclusive? Some managers have never considered the alternative, and they perpetuate the status quo. Others do it because it justifies their existence as managers, just as lords, royalty, and clergy once knew better than their subjects. Since activity is seen as the primary metric of worth within the modern organization, managers are incentivized to create a lot of activity. As one can posit, activity does not necessarily result in progress or anything meaningful. Here lies the critical issue: what is meaningful within the organization, and how does one measure it? Until the organization can answer these questions, managers and employees will continue to do many "things" to justify their existence. Along the way, many will miss the point. #### Related Items [[Performance]] [[Organization]] [[Management]] [[Progress]] [[Thinking]] [[Meaning]] [[Metrics]] [[Measurement]]