I was pleasantly surprised to see a chapter on performance management in Daniel Kahneman’s recent book Noise (2021). If anything, it is a major contributor to organisational noise. He points out that the relationship between performance ratings and actual performance is tenuous at best. With all the effort invested into performance management processes, it rarely engenders performance as such. It may have been comical had it not been so sad.
Why? David Rock et al., in their article, Kill Your Performance Ratings (2014), fittingly indicate that numerically labelling people inevitably generates a fight or flight “response that impairs good judgment“. Sadly, only one group seems to benefit from the performance management process – senior executives. They seem to intrinsically be rewarded by “the feelings of status, certainty and autonomy that occur when one is presiding over a forced ranking system”. This is neither desirable nor good enough.
Simultaneously, driven by the 4th industrial revolution and accelerated by the COVID pandemic, we are speeding into a technology-driven, disruptive, but human first era. As Dave Snowden (1999) points out, in this exciting new world, “knowledge can only be volunteered, it cannot be conscripted”. The same holds true for performance, caring and trust. As HR professionals and as custodians of this process, it is incumbent on us to fix it for the people and organisations we serve.
We have a unique opportunity amidst and post the pandemic, and it would be a travesty to squander it. The opportunity of a new, hybrid and hopefully changed workplace, but in lockstep a fundamentally changed performance management approach. Not scrapping it but changing it. We need to address performance management as a core and systemic tenet of the HR new normal. A noise muffler, not an amplifier.
To do so may require a shift away from the overuse of words, concepts, and terms such as performance, productivity, utilisation and sales targets as core beliefs in the performance management process. Instead, it may be more useful to consider contributions from teams rather than individuals as a starting point and fiercely focus on the concepts of recognition and the development of people.
We need to seek approaches that sensibly address the important neuroscience factors that impact people the world over, namely Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, Fairness (Rock et al., 2014). We are to build a framework that negates the negative overtones of performance management and strives to find a positive foundation to engage on an emotional and rational level. Wouldn’t it be great if we could at least say that the process was fair and did not undermine the autonomy of the people we work with?
Alvin Toffler is often quoted for stating that unlearning and relearning to be as important as learning itself. I think it is time to unbelieve some of our performance management myths and convictions. A time to create a process conducive to guiding authentic performance and behaviour. As core tenets, it needs to be elegant in form and philosophy, fair at all costs and a durable process supported by the people it is aimed to serve.
Wouldn’t it be great to experience a fair, team-driven, perhaps highly personalised performance management process through consumer-grade technology?
About the Author
Barry Vorster is a human resource and consulting leader with a track record in strategic talent management, future of work and culture transformation applications. He is the Chief Strategy Officer, leads the VSLS Enablement Technologies and Workforce Transformation teams that specialise in strategic advisory, content experience design and technology enablement to unlock the true potential of organisations. He has more than twenty-five years of consulting experience and has been enmeshed in helping organisations within the ambit of human resources, organisational culture, HR technology, learning, and the future of work.