On Wed, 11 Feb 1998, Richard Goodale wrote:
> I do know that "a good dentist knows his or her professional limitations."
> But......how do I know that he or she is "good" without relying on some
> sort of explicit or implicit ranking (even if it's just "some word of
> mouth"--pun not intended, but acknowledged--recommendation from a friend)?
It depends of what you mean by "good." When people recommend a dentist,
they usually talk about how well the care he gave them met their needs and
wants, period. In other words, they determine that he's "good" by
comparing his performance to a set of (not necessarily verbalized)
criteria, *not* by comparing his performance to the performance of other
dentists. One can consider a dentist a "good" dentist even if he's the
only dentist you've ever seen in your life. And conversely, one could
have seen several dentists and never been satisfied with any of them.
It's important to keep in mind that ranking and rating are not the same
thing. Ranking is *one particular form* of rating, and one can question
its utility while still considering other forms of rating useful. I
should also note that ranking with forced distribution is not the same
thing as ranking alone.
Finally, I want to point out something that's mathematicaly obvious but
that too many people (especially those who just found out who John Galt
is) forget: an individual's rank in a ranking of performances is
determined not only by his own performance, but by other people's
performances as well. Therefore, even in a situation where an individual
has complete control over his level of performance and therefore has
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY (try to envision foot-high letters here) for his
absolute level of performance, he does *not* have complete control over
other people's performance and therefore does *not* have total PERSONAL
RESPONSIBILITY for his rank. And if he *did* have such control, what sort
of control would he need to exercise to increase his rank? The sort of
control that would *lower* other people's absolute levels of performance,
that's what.
If an individual's level of contribution to an organization is determined
by how far his performance is ahead of his co-workers' performances, than
a mediocre performer surrounded by total slackers is more valuable than a
high achiever surrounded by other high achievers. This, I propose, is
total nonsense. Ranking cannot, by itself, identify "good" or "bad"
performers because it doesn't compare performance to criteria.
--Eric Bohlman <ebohlman@netcom.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>