Boris Ewenstein, Bryan Hancock, Asmus Komm

Experts say three [coaching] practices that appear to deliver results are to change the language of feedback; to provide constant, crowdsourced vignettes of what worked and what didn’t; and to focus performance discussions more on what’s needed for the future than what happened in the past.

Ahead of the Curve: The Future of Performance Management

What happens after companies jettison traditional year-end evaluations?

Boris Ewenstein, Bryan Hancock, Asmus Komm

Since only a few employees are standouts, it makes little sense to risk demotivating the broad majority by linking pay and performance. More and more technology companies, for instance, have done away with performance-related bonuses. Instead, they offer a competitive base salary and peg bonuses (sometimes paid in shares or share options) to the company’s overall performance. Employees are free to focus on doing great … [ Read more ]

Boris Ewenstein, Bryan Hancock, Asmus Komm

Identifying clear overperformers and underperformers is important, but conducting annual ratings rituals based on the bell curve will not develop the workforce overall. Instead, by getting rid of bureaucratic annual-review processes—and the behavior related to them—companies can focus on getting much higher levels of performance out of many more of their employees.

Boris Ewenstein, Bryan Hancock, Asmus Komm

Managers attempt to rate their employees as best they can. The ratings are then calibrated against one another and, if necessary, adjusted by distribution guidelines that are typically bell curves (Gaussian distribution curves). These guidelines assume that the vast majority of employees cluster around the mean and meet expectations, while smaller numbers over- and underperform. […] This logic appeals intuitively (“aren’t the majority of people … [ Read more ]

Changing Change Management

Research tells us that most change efforts fail. Yet change methodologies are stuck in a predigital era. It’s high time to start catching up.