Greetings:
The recent posts villifying management that adopt employee ranking
prompted this response. I recognize that I am risking my on-line neck by
offering this comment but feel compelled to do so. Yes, in an ideal world
employee ranking and forced distribution curves are abandoned. In that
more perfect universe, we have participative work redesign, fabulous
self-organizing teams, and other such improvements.
I don't get to work in that world but rather towards it. Decisions to
embrace or retain the cited practices are due to a variety of cultural,
historical, and political forces. I don't think we do ourselves a favor by
casting the issue in a villian and victim polarity. There are paradoxes
that influence the situation: how do we change our compensation system to
better reflect the performance of the business scorecard? How do we raise
the bar on performance? There are other ways than the ones cited but the
weight of past practice and even human tendencies in Western civilization
(we love to measure everything!!) drive a regression to these methods.
I'd love to hear approaches to turning management around that take into
account the reality of their backgrounds and predilections. I offer this
statement as an attempt to get at the weightier themes beneath Roxanne's
intial evidence.
All the best,
-- T.J. Elliott Cavanaugh Leahy http://idt.net/~tjell 914 366-7499Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>