this is off the top of my head, so apologies ahead of time.
Suppose that one wanted to do the 'appraisal' scene with greater
frequency (reduce the length of the feedback loop). The 'appraiser'
would also want to reduce the stress of the whole thing by not making
major decisions/changes in the appraised person's status or income on
a frequent basis. That is to say, the 'appraiser' should not judge
firmly. We're more into 'coaching' here. "Drive out fear."
What frequency of mutual discussion is desirable? We've already said
1/year is not. 1/month? 1/week? 1/day? How about once per
decision-making action, with the action taken by the person being
'coached'? If that would get extreme, we could reduce it depending
on how often the actions taken deviated from the supervisor's
desire. Nah, that would only focus on the negative deviations. Any
great frequency would also require that the supervisor have great
knowledge of the details of things, and be able to link them to a
larger picture, that presumably the subordinate did not have access to.
that's asking a heck of a lot of the supervisor. Maybe we should
suggest a frequency of discussions that matches the supervisor's
understanding of the larger picture, greater than the subordinate's
understanding.
Now, if I take this view of frequency, what differences do I see
between 'managing line workers' and 'managing managers'?
Line workers' output can be measured relatively easily - number of
good thingies made per day, frequency of bad thingies. But also, we
need for those line workers to devise improvements in their
activities to reduce the frequency of bad thingies and smooth out or
shorten their work flow. Office based managers aren't much help for
this; those line workers need to express a lot of initiative, and
those managers need to encourage and facilitate it.
The same logic applies to 'line workers' doing relatively repetitive
tasks in the office. I'm thinking of claims agents in a medical or
automotive insurance office as an example. The managers may have a
closer view of the details than a factory, but in my experience very
few people know most of the details in a way suitable for making
improvements. The people doing the tasks are still central to
serious improvements; managers can support and facilitate.
Managers' output depends on the output of others. We can measure
that output? (Some of them might be the degree of accomplishment for
those facilitating things mentioned above.) Can we imagine a 'good'
output and a 'bad' output to compare with the actual output? there
are lots of outputs (and lots of paths to get to them), so this might
be tough. Nonetheless, when the boss tells me "You done good." or
"you done bad." there is an implicit comparison between what happened
and something else. Can the boss articulate what that something is?
I agree with Jack that managing managers can be more difficult than
managing line workers, but only because the measurement of output,
esp. good output, is more difficult. At least for me.
Jay
On Sep 29, 2005, at 6:13 PM, Jack Ring wrote:
> Managing line workers is one thing. Managing managers is quite
> another.
>
> I am wondering how those on this list who eschew annual appraisals
> go about appraising managers.
>
> Do you shadow them around during their continual interactions with
> the employees for which they are accountable?
>
> Or do you deal only with your direct relationship and not with how
> well they manage others?
>
> Or what?
>
Jay Warner
Principal Scientist
Warner Consulting, Inc.
4444 North Green Bay Road
Racine, WI 53404-1216
USA
Ph: 262.634.9100
FAX: 262.681.1133
email:
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