The Recurring Question
June 18th, 2008 by Cali & Jody
We were talking with a friend the other day and he wanted to know how the book tour was going. You know, personally. We said that we are energized by the response, and excited that people seem to be engaging with the book, even if they have questions about the contents.
Then he wanted to know what was frustrating about talking about the book. He wanted to know what was the question or concern that we found the most bothersome to answer. In other words, what cheesed us off.
First, nothing really cheeses us off. When we read a blog post comment that calls ROWE a “pipe dream” or us “hippies”, it doesn’t bother us. We’ve heard it all before. And when we hear these comments, we don’t hear the dismissive tone or the casual insult. We hear the sound of someone’s beliefs about work. Beliefs like:
Some people just need supervision
If you give people control over their schedules, they will take advantage
The best collaborations happen face-to-face
And so forth. If these statements were facts (if they had been generated in some kind of Swiss workplace-optimization lab), then we’d worry. But these statements are not facts. They are beliefs that most of us share, but that doesn’t make them true.
However, we do get frustrated when people say things like, “A Results-Only Work Environment sounds great. But it would never work with my job, because you couldn’t measure the results. I do [insert job here] and how do you measure results for that?”
Ironically, this is also the sound of someone’s beliefs about work, although it’s more subtle and much harder for us to answer. The reason why it’s hard for us to answer is that we don’t understand the ins and outs of every job on Earth. We have no idea how to measure results for your job, because we’re not inside your business, tracking its performance goals, jockeying for position with your competitors and trying to survive in your category or field.
But you are inside your business, aren’t you? And your coworkers are. And your boss and upper management and your leaders are. Collectively, you all know what’s important because you’re in the thick of it. If you banded together and had daily, probing questions about what you were trying to accomplish, then you’d know what kind of results your particular job (and every job in the organization) needed to drive.
So the question isn’t, How do you set goals and measure outcomes for [insert job here]? The better question is, Why doesn’t our entire organization have a culture that only cares about results? Why is my boss as concerned about my getting to work on time as she is about whether or not I actually do my job? Why do we have quarterly performance reviews when performance questions come up all the time? Why is 360-degree feedback this huge, elaborate ritual that freaks people out instead of being a natural part of our daily routine?
The answer to those questions is culture. The reason why people can’t even imagine setting goals and measuring results for their job is because the traditional culture of work doesn’t put a premium on results. The traditional culture of work puts a premium on a mixture of results, keeping up appearances and obedience. (Which is fine if you go for that kind of thing.) By putting results first, a ROWE changes everybody’s mindset about work. And when you are only judged on results, the entire organization shifts its focus. You figure out how to set goals and measure results because, quite frankly, it’s all you’ve got.
We agree that 360 feedback appraisals dont have to be huge and that company wide goals should align but this never happens in reality
When your performance feedback and compensation reviews are forced into a periodic schedule, there’s no way for it *not* to be huge. You can “streamline” it all you want, but when your paycheck hinges upon a single annual review(or quarterly, semi-annual, whatever), then it’s always going to be this huge, elaborate thing for the appraisee if not the appraiser.
While I will not argue that there is no value to be found in a regular appraisal, I think the point is not about the size, quantity, or comprehensiveness of the appraisal(s), but rather the mindset that performance review is something that is visited on a periodic basis rather than a part of daily business. In essence, 360 reviews and their ilk are more of a crutch for avoiding a real active focus on results.
Then again, they do free up a lot of time for clock-watching if you’re into that sort of thing (and most managers are).
How many companies go through the elaborate performance review ritual because that is what companies are supposed to do rather than to achieve any real goal? I am reminded of the story of the woman who always cut off the end of her roast before roasting it because that’s what her mother always did. Ask her mother why and she replies because that’s what her grandmother always did. Ask her grandmother why and she replies because that’s the only way the roast would fit in her pan. We keep mindlessly doing things because that’s what we’re supposed to be doing, even though the original reasons for doing them are lost and probably don’t even apply anymore.
I think that the people making this claim (”in MY job you can’t measure performance”) are raising a point that deserves a real answer. It is well known that things like performance reviews are EXTREMELY inaccurate and subjective, and that’s probably because it really IS very difficult to measure performance in many jobs.
I find your response: “you should change your culture so you CAN measure results” to be lacking. What if it really WERE true that for many jobs performance were impossible to measure? It would mean that ROWE couldn’t be successful in such environments. I don’t really believe that this is the case, but I think that the people asking the question deserve a better answer.
You obviously can’t tell us how to measure productivity in our jobs because you don’t know each and every job. But what you COULD do would be to list 6 or 7 different examples of jobs where it’s not obvious how to measure productivity and then a case study of how productivity got measured at that job. Of course the complainant’s job likely wouldn’t be on the list, but showing answers for a good number of cases would illustrate that it IS possible to measure productivity if you use some creativity.
– Michael Chermside
My question would be:
How does one protect from the slippery slope of accomplishing the results by ANY means? Focusing on the results is great, but the path takenm can be more important (especially in the post Enron enviroment).