(Actually) Useful Performance Reviews

Hello everyone, and welcome back to this month's edition of Building Value. This month we tackle everyone's favorite topic to hate: performance reviews. Most everyone has been a part of these, whether you are the one receiving them or the one who's doing the review, and most everyone would agree that for one reason or another they are quite often not useful. Often they occur once a year, with managers only able to remember events from roughly the past few weeks or so, if that, and as a result they take the form of all parties going through the motions: 'Hey, you're doing great, anything else on your mind?' 'No, me either, okay, thanks, see you next year.' Or, 'Hey, you're doing great, here, here, and here, but management also says that I need to give you an area to improve because we can't give perfect scores.' Or here, one of the worst versions of the performance review: the dreaded dropping of the hammer, unexpectedly, to the employee who had no idea they were underperforming. This is often also because we, as managers and bosses, were either unclear in our communication or unclear in our expectations up until that point, none of which is fair to the person on the receiving end.

So what can we do to turn this on its head, to actually make it productive and useful for all parties, instead of something that we all dread seeing on our calendars? First, make them quarterly, ideally with quick monthly check-ins along the way to see if there are any minor course corrections needing to be made. Nothing useful comes out of a one-time, once-a-year discussion. Your employees are going to have a much more productive year if they know what doing a good job looks like, if they are or are not doing a good job, and are receiving consistent feedback on all of the above, especially compared to the alternative of meeting with them once at the end of the year when everyone is already half checked out for the holidays.

Now, secondly, make it both qualitative and quantitative. There's a lot more to being a great, productive employee than simply hitting a handful of metrics. Do these often drive the bottom line? Sure, at least partially. But anyone of working age also knows that when you work at a company doing something you really like, with people you really like, you work harder and you tend to get better results because of it. At Presilium, part of this evaluation includes things like: do you go above and beyond for our clients and your teammates, or better yet, do you proactively look for opportunities to do so? Do you acknowledge your mistakes, and is it genuine? Mistakes happen, they're part of life, but how you react and respond from there is often quite telling. And do you come ready to work each day, well rested and ready to attack your role? We are in a wonderful position where we get to come to work each day and do important work for amazing people. If you can't get fired up about that, you're not likely in the right role.

Now, these are just a few examples to give you a sense of what these can look like and how you can shape them more specifically for you and your business and your goals. But the last thing that you want to think about and aim to include is the ability to create buy-in and ownership around these expectations, these metrics. This is a joint venture. Obviously, as the owner you have the last say, and often the first say, that's fair. But if you do not jointly create these standards of measurement, or at least have joint buy-in at their creation, the results you get will not be the results that you want. Additionally, by jointly developing these metrics, it helps to expose your own blind spots. Perhaps it's something that takes more or less time than you expected, or something you felt was very important that they didn't realize was, because you never shared the why behind it, or maybe it was something you thought was implicitly understood but wasn't, and is now in a much better place after being openly communicated. Ultimately, all of this just gets everyone on the same page, which is never a bad result.

As always, developing this will not be easy. It will take time, energy, and focus, but it will be worth it. And remember, there's typically not one right or perfect answer, especially starting out. Instead of aiming for perfection, simply aim for implementation, knowing that this is something that will change and improve over time with each iteration, and that's perfectly okay. Thanks for joining me everyone. Until next month, keep building value.