It was my experience in a company which used forced distribution that over a
period of ten years, the performance appraisal process degenerated from a
tool by which a manager could truly communicate performance to his employees
to a popularity contest. I can recall ranking an employee in the lower 40
percentile and justifying it only to have management refuse to allow the
assessment to stand because he had been in the upper 90% for 4 years in his
former position. And can also recall a ranking in the upper 10 percentile
for an employee who caught on fire for me which was reduced to the lowest
10% because the employee had never been rated highly before. I later helped
this employee find a new position with a competitor where over a period of
time he rose to an upper management position.
I tend to feel these systems promote the in-group rather than reward the
people who get the work done.
I lean towards Fred Nickol's approach, because management does not seem to
be able to apply appraisal systems very fairly.
Middle managers are often nudged with words like, "Give so and so a lousy
appraisal. I want to get rid of him." Or, "Give so and so a great appraisal.
I want to peddle him to another division."
Dick Montgomery, 20th Century Cooperative
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Bacal" <
rbacal@ESCAPE.CA>
To: <
MG-ED-DV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU>
Sent: Tuesday, May 02, 2000 7:42 PM
Subject: Re: Forced normal distributions and performance appraisals
> On 2 May 00, at 18:16, Fred Nickols wrote:
>
>
> > The performance appraisal system is not a performance appraisal
> > system at all; that's an artifice, a myth, a fairy tale, a lie. The
> > performance appraisal system is a management tool and it will be bent to
> > whatever purpose management happens to have handy. If that's screwing
one
> > group and not another, so be it. If that's figuring out who to fire,
> > that's the way it will be used. If it's a matter of ensuring that some
> > people are promoted and others aren't, that is what will happen. The
> > reason I would like to see norm-referenced performance appraisal systems
> > scrapped (and I made that clear in my article) is that they aren't
> > performance appraisal systems at all and they never will be. They are a
> > management tool and the uses to which that tool are put frequently have
> > nothing to do with performance; indeed, it could be argued that they
> > rarely have anything to do with performance.
>
> WELL PUT! Of course the issue REALLY is that since people are
> going to continue to use them, can we make the process less of a
> lie?
>
> ...I think less is possible, as I think Frank Shipper does. How close
> to truth is one I'm not sure of.
>
> ...but one thing I am sure of. The way to better appraisals is
> certainly not through the use of "lying" numbers.
>
>
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