Terri,
Thanks for the response. Ranking is used to identify individual deficits.
What you do with the information is what is critical. If we blame, then
we have failed. If we learn then we have succeeded. If a sub-par
performer becomes an acceptable performer, then we have cause to
celebrate.
Ranking does imply a relative standing or positioning. I think we are
uncomfortable with this notion, but in the absence of some context, there
is no opportunity to learn. Relative standing is also important to
accountability, as I described in a note to David Wilkinson.
My opinion is that too many people see the abuse of ranking, and want to
eliminate ranking. This does not in fact eliminate abuse, because those
who abuse will find another venue to continue to abuse. So let's not
eliminate ranking, but work on those who misuse it. They, too, like all
the rest of us, need an opportunity to develop more effective capacities.
In my organization for example managers are subject to pretty disciplined
scrutiny on their operating styles. It may take awhile to resolve bad
situations, but they always get resolved. So, I understand your
discomfort, but I see the solution differently.
You say, "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."
I recognize that what I do does not work for everyone, but I will tell you
how I approach this issue. Termination of an employee is a performance
appraisal issue for managers. In other words, if a manager terminates
someone, their relative ranking declines to some extent, and it becomes
the subject for a learning process. Why did we hire this person? In
retrospect, could we have identified that this person was a high risk of
firing? Why didn't we see that? How will we see it next time? Do we all
agree that termination was the right thing to do? What alternatives were
not explored, and why not? Was the manager correct in their decision, and
if not, how will we correct that problem in the future?
If, in the end, we have learned something, we agree that termination was
the right thing to do, then it is a success in some way. If those
conditions do not hold, then it is a performance failure, and we hold
people accountable for those. This only works if you have very high
standards and expectatioins, I think. You see, the same methods we use on
employees are applicable to management as well. Again, I recognize this
does not work everywhere, but I believe it can work in any learning
organization.
--Rol Fessenden
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