Thanks, Rol. Had to spend some time questioning my own assumptions.
You said,
> I take it from this that you assume that ranking presumes the individual
> is alone in his/her need.
Yep, that is what I was presuming. My experience has been that ranking
systems are most often used to identify individual deficits, thus to be
able to correct the defective equipment or eliminate it. Similar to
what's done within the school systems. Seldom do I see leaders (or
instructors) look at the ranking and ask, What am I/are we doing/not doing
that is contributing to this person's performance? Where I see ranking at
work, I see it used to determine an individual's effectiveness or
failings, and used as a means to reward or punish. Opens the door to some
heavy fear factors.
>This is not my assumption. Ranking may imply
> that to most people, I cannot say. Just to be clear, ranking to me is
> just a way to identify interesting variances. The variances may result
> from many, many circumstances, some, but not most, revolving around
> compentency of the individual.
Am glad to learn some people use ranking differently. This makes more
sense to me. But 'ranking,' by definition, implies a relative standing or
positioning. While this in itself is not necessarily harmful, the
potential for abuse (as we've seen) can be huge. I'd rather try to find
ways to clarify a person's contribution to the collective, and the overall
effectiveness of the evolving system, which didn't open this particular
door. Maybe it's not possible.
> On the other hand, competency is not at
> all irrelevant, and must be considered. This is especially true when one
> can detect no systemic differences between one employee and another, and
> yet one performs better than the other.
Very much agree there. But competency is such a gray area, as we've seen
in the discussion recently. Easy to see in it's extreme, but otherwise is
a tough call, and easily twisted to serve more powerful interests. Like
everything else, generalities here don't work, and the creation of hard
and fast rules often creates conditions that impair learning.
Best wishes,
--Terri A Deems tadeems@aol.com
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