Rol,
Your comments are right on target.
"Triage" is the right metaphor, but only if one recognises (as you do)
that it is valuable to organisations to single out for special treatment
not only the underperformers, but also the high performers. In my direct
and indirect experience, going back over 25-30 years, it's ability to
contriburte to this function is perhaps the most important benefit of
employee ranking systems.
You focus in your posting on the evident "dislike" of many on this list to
the recognition of the fact of "sub-par" performance. You rightly note
that sub-par performance does exist, in all organisationations, even those
with the highest of standards. You also, again rightly, note that the
crux of the leadership challenge relative to these situations involves
balancing the possibiltiies for remedial action with the hard but eventual
necessity of "culling" those for whom such action has not proven
beneficial or effective. We would all like to think that all people can
be saved, in all situations, but we know, if we cast our glance over our
experience with the cold eye of reason, such is not the case.
You don't go much into the issue of the "6-sigma"s on the other end of the
distribution, but I suspect that many who have participated in this thread
inherently dislike the concept of identifying and nurturing "star"
performers as much as they dislike the identification of those who cannot
hack it. However, IMHO, this part of any "ranking" "system" is its most
critical function. Perhaps some readers can convince me otherwise, but my
reading of corporate (and other) organisational history is that great
organisations are built on the vision and capabilties of some discrete but
very small number of great people. In many, if not most, of these cases,
that vision and those capabilities included an ability and desire to
engage other people and nurture and expand their capabilities. Often,
that is what makes those people "great."
Regardless, if you ignore that there are "order of magnitude" higher
performers in any distribution of people (as did one of the posters to
this thread who seemed to disregard Bill Gates' observation that there
are, IN FACT, programmers who are 100X more effective than the "norm."),
you do so at your and your organisation's peril. It's what differs the
Citibanks from the Barclays of the world.
Finally, very good call on the observation that some who oppose employee
ranking, seem to want to justify their view by looking at the practices of
the "Top 100" companies--who said that Americans don't do irony?
Slainte Mhar
Richard Goodale
The Dorncoh Partnership
"Discovery, Creativity, Leadership"
--Richard Goodale <fc45@dial.pipex.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>