Organisations expend so much money and effort on measuring and reviewing people like work machines, when it could be better spent in supporting them in their own self improvement. People know what they want and need to be better at, especially those working in a healthy team.
I’m reminded of nations that use guns and bombs to “liberate” countries instead of winning hearts and minds with healthcare and education.
it’s the system that constrains us to have to do performance theatre, which is the wasteful bit. I was thinking – and I believe the tweet is aimed – at the organisational level not individual managers.
The individual relationships between manager and employee are generally constructive. There are two dynamics in the manager/employee relationship that I think are anti-patterns :
1) the manager assumes they are smarter because they are a manager. They tell what the performance is and what needs to be done to improve it instead of asking.
2) the power relationship is asymmetric: the employee feels they have to take the assessment and advice whether they agree or not.
There are corporate anti-patterns too:
3) review and improvement are imposed not invited. It is top-down command-and-control.
4) performance is measured by numbers. You cant do that for individual workers unless all their work is transactional toil with no other value produced.
5) There is no right of appeal. Employees are subject to the nature of their manager.
6) It’s not real. The organisation doesn’t actually care about how an employee is doing or what they feel they need.
These are the kind of things Charles and I are getting at here. Less theatre, more real nurturing.