Comments on: Performance bell curves don’t work!

By: Kimberlee Burt

Kimberlee Burt — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:59:56 +0000

Everyone is talking about the ‘creative economy’and the need for innovation. Performance reviews are based on the ‘average’, eg the lowest common denominator that is acceptable…i.e. performs to an acceptable average…consistently performs above average….performs to a high standard & consistently exceeds expectations. In most art colleges they have done away with an hierarchical grading system because it did not encourage creativity and in fact could damage self-esteem. It is replaced with an assessment of what is produced and of course if you don’t produce something, you fail. Big companies should take a leaf out of their book. As you said the grading is subjective anyway.

By: epredator

epredator — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:42:44 +0000

Yes, the curve itself against 1 parameter or a collection of similar ones makes sense. Give a bunch of racing drivers the same car and a few will be great. Play tennis and a Federer will emerge. As you quite rightly say though the veneer of objectivity on the subjective, and not using like for like breaks the process.
I don’t think it is too late for many companies to change. Whilst at the moment they may be looking for excuses to resource action, down size, force people to pension themselves off if they continue on this path they will loose. They will loose people, the good ones, they will loose money due to enforcing a set of HR systems that cost money for a negative effect and they will loose customers who increasingly get to engage with the spirit of the company.
As per the BBC Virtual Revolution in my previous post, the great leveller of the web and the communication and transparency it engenders will force change in such outmoded practice.
These are constructs of humans, hence they can be changed for the better, and as has happened at the moment for the worse.

By: Peter Ward

Peter Ward — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:17:29 +0000

You didn’t need to be reminded of this, did you? Deming told us this 40 years ago.

Deming said that performance generally fell into 3 areas:

The top 10%. Always at the top. They’re noticeably different. Learn from them
The middle 80%. Sometimes perform better than others, due to natural variation. Support them
The bottom 10%. Always at the bottom. Teach them or move them to a different job where they can do better.

Everyone knows the top 10%. Their peers recognise them as such. We also know who’s in the bottom 10% — ditto. For the rest of us, sometimes we do great, sometimes we don’t quite, but we’re there or thereabouts depending on things like whether we get the contract or the customer likes us that day.

It’s not actually that difficult. The problem comes where companies insist on measuring things that can’t be measured in order to apply a veneer of objectivity onto a subjective process (something I’ve said to many managers without them denying it). Why would they need to do that? Perhaps because otherwise they’d be sued and not have the numeric evidence to back up whatever decisions they took on the results of their assessments.

Which is where other Deming ideas come into play. Things like “drive out fear”, and the need for trust between management and workers. Perhaps it’s all too late for such things, in a culture where even acceptable performers are being made redundant because they’re too far down the bellcurve (this year).

Will things change? I can’t see it. We live with it, or move elsewhere. Or start our own business. But companies certainly suffer terribly as a result of their application of flawed principles to the measurement of staff performance.