Back in the late 1990's, I had the pleasure of participating in a 360 degree review at a Silicon Valley VC-funded start-up. It was by all means the best performance management event in which I have ever participated, both as an employee and as a manager. The reasons it worked?
- There was a tremendous amount of trust at all levels of the organization and amongst most employees.
- An outside facilitator with expertise and experience in conducting these reviews was hired.
- The necessary time and energy was devoted to the activity.
I was not the one paying for the consulting firm who conducted the process. And this was the late 90's, so we were all burning through money like it grew on trees - which at the time, it seemed to do. I would have to think hard about spending this type of money in a tight economy. If conducted properly, these types of reviews are expensive in both hard costs and time commitments from everyone in the organization. Where am I going with all this? Well, the topic got me to thinking about how the proper deployment and usage of social computing within the enterprise could facilitate on ongoing and continual 360 degree review process. Heightened transparency, improved corporate identity, and the ability for people at all levels of the organization to critique content should enable the emergence of a new way to manage performance. Certainly, talent management professionals at corporations all over the world are thinking hard about this phenomena and it may by a bit disconcerting. We will need to see constantly improving innovations in reporting, social networking analysis, social "fingerprinting" and rating systems to provide the tools that will be demanded by corporate governance and talent management departmernts. But, patterns will most definitely emerge that will question the status quo of traditional, top-down performance management. Representative activities which will cause this to happen:
- Rating of activity, commenting on created content and voting of ideas will provide feedback that a single manager could never collect in a more closed system.
- Transparent discussions, taken out of email, open the door to voices never before heard.
- Emergent skills will be more visible as employees participate in their daily activities - e.g., "Who knew that Todd has such great ability to craft a marketing message?"
- Status reporting becomes an ongoing activity, represented in each employee's activity stream.
I am interested to hear feedback from companies who are considering how performance management will change within their companies as a result of Enterprise 2.0, both the required cultural changes and the introduction of technology. What frightens you about this transformation?
- Inappropriate commentary, backlash, sabotage amongst peers or against subordinates.
- A developing laziness by managers who hate doing performance management now and see this as a way to shirk the duty.
- Fear of retribution by employees who openly share feedback.
To the contrary, what excites you about this transformation?
- The usage of the tools highlights skills and experience that might have been missed in the past, resulting in the fulfillment of more positions from within.
- Performance management actually becomes much easier for managers and occurs continually instead of as a yearly occurrence.
- Top management more readily receives candid feedback from all staff, leading to a keener appreciation for the voice of the employee.
Comments