3 Perspectives on Reviews

Ok, I know I’m a broken record on reviews, just like I was a broken record on goal setting a couple of months ago.  Well, right now it’s annual review time at the F50C and a couple of months ago it was goal time.

So here’s the deal: I’ve given three reviews now in the 2007 and 2008 cycles where each employee got a very similar score and very similar mix of you-did-some-stuff-well-and-other-stuff-not-well feedback. I should add that all three got an average score, denoting straightforward, solid work that was not insufficient nor was it out-performance. All three reacted very differently to their very similar reviews and now I share with you my perspective on them:

Person A: Lower pay-grade, newer in career. Very resilient.  Took the review score and feedback for what they were: honest reflections of performance, and tools to use to help them improve in the coming year.  Bummed that the score was not higher but generally understood that their performance was not remarkably different from your average analyst.  Since the review has repeatedly stated commitment to improving, has tried out different tactics and is keeping the feedback front-of-mind.  Performance now is not an overnight switch to perfect but I trust completely that this person is committed to learning from mistakes and to moving from a task-checklist way of working to a more sophisticated leadership style. So far, I’m very impressed.

Person B: middle pay-grade, a bit further on in career. The review gave this person pause, although they held it together and remained very professional during the review meeting.  Their style is one to take input and digest it, consider it, analyze it for a while, so this person took the review information and thought it over. They also sought out a mentor they trusted to get a second point of view.  This was smart, because this person helped reinforce that an average score is not a NEGATIVE score, just average, and that the feedback is useful if the person was willing to use it and take action. The employee then spent the year trying out a variety of tactics and techniques to neutralize weaknesses and push out of their comfort zone, and partnered actively with me to figure out how to leverage their natural strengths to deliver more and to build trust and credibility.  This person in the 2008 cycle got a stellar review score and was also promoted.

Person C: highest pay grade, furthest along in their career, least time at the F50C. FLIPPED OUT.  None of the feedback in the review was new, but the person had a very strong negative reaction, tears, defensiveness, and was all over the place in terms of response — could not stop talking, did not finish points, jumped from point to point to point. Most concerning to me was a serious lack of resilience around the score and message. The person used almost exclusively “always/never” language: They will always get a poor score, they will never improve or be promoted, there is nothing they can do to affect their own situation.  They also used a lot of victim language: they did out perform, just none of their partners, clients or management saw it because it was subtle. External circumstances (the project, the economy, their switch from IT to business) caused the problem.  Lots of absolutist and low locus of control language. Lots of exaggeration around how bad things really are — the sky is falling (e.g. average score = worst score ever, mix of positive and negative feedback = everyone hates them).

What about you? Who are you? I mean really, honestly: are you an A, B or C?

Slightly Shocking Advice

G is a colleague who is one of the most amazing leaders of people I know.  He has been doing it for 14 years. I often look to his example & mentoring for advice. Yesterday at lunch he gave me some slightly shocking advice.

Background: At the F50C, annual and mid-year review time brings with it something I’ll call Leadership Assessment to help me avoid being dooced.  In the Leadership Assessment process, all managers of a department get together for a marathon session in which they discuss every employee: their strengths & weaknesses, potential for promotion, readiness for promotion.  They also set the employees’ review score and any compensation increases above & beyond what the score brings.

What’s nice about this is that important things like score and potential for promotion are not at risk to be in the hands of just one power-mad, jackass boss.  The group is a tempering, if not eliminating, influence on that kind of managerial abuse.  Of course what’s totally uncomfortable about this process is knowing that every manager on the team is sitting around talking about you, judging you, and sharing dirty laundry about you.

The slightly shocking advice:

Before every Leadership Assessment period, G asks his boss, What are you planning to say about me at Leadership Assessment? If that isn’t enough for the timid folks out there, G then tells his boss, After Leadership Assessment I’m going to come back to you and ask you what you actually said about me, and what everyone else said about me.

Wait, it gets better:

Then G goes in turn to each of his employees, and tells them: Here’s what I plan to say about you at Leadership Assessment, and then afterwards I’m going to come back and tell you what I actually said and also what everyone else said about you.

I find this advice amazing, mainly because it never would have occurred to ask this of my boss, or tell this to my employees without their asking first.  As much as I love and crave feedback, I am timid when it comes to asking for my leaders to lay my brand perception, potential and reputation all out on the table like that.  And I was super impressed when G told me he did this for his team.  He says consistently they love it.  I talked about managerial courage a little bit the other day: that’s nothing compared to this courage.

Are you bold enough to have your leadership really lay out for you all the external perceptions & reputation?

Are you bold enough to ask your manger to be frank about your potential for promotion?

Are you courageous enough to tell these things frankly but fairly to your employees?

Layoffs

My company announced today that it is reducing its HQ workforce by almost 10%. Approximately two-thirds of this reduction is due to layoffs, effective this morning; the rest is due to not back-filling open positions.
I, and my team, are not directly affected.  But many of our partners and clients are.

I was off-site all day, getting a tour of a sattelite location.  One poor gentleman in our party was essentially laid off over the phone — just as our bosses were contacting us with the official news, he recived a call instructing him to get back downtown ASAP.  Because they don’t do layoffs over the phone.

Since I was off-site, I missed a lot of the angst.  One of my partners emailed me towards the end of the day to say the mood was like a funeral.

My public radio station called me for a quote as I was driving home.  I said no way, I’m not able to speak to the media.  I’d be shocked if they get an on-the-record quote from anyone who wasn’t laid off. I honestly think that’s an easy way to get fired.

I F#%!ed Up

Days like today are the best days to have a blog, because what else would I do with my angst? With a blog, I can store it all neatly right here and get it out of my head.

So….I f#%!ed up today in a very big and very public way.

Actually, I messed up back at xmastime; it just came out today.  I have a client, who is sunsetting a Small Subject-Area Tool.  At xmastime, I proofread a newsletter release he wrote about the sunset.  I failed to catch a critical error: He stated that Large Important Tool (the parent of Small Tool) was being eliminated entirely in 2009.  Not true. Only Small Tool is being eliminated.  It was my responsibility to catch the error — my client wasn’t in a position to know.

The newsletter went out over email today, to a third of the company.  The newsletter clearly & falsely stated that Large Tool is being eliminated. This caused quite the shock & surprised, and the newsletter began being forwarded.  Within minutes it had hit my boss’ boss’ inbox.  She’s the SVP.  If she got it that quickly, it was only minutes before the Executive Committee and the CEO got it.

The Executive Committee and the CEO loooooove the Large Important Tool. News, even false, of its demise  has likely triggered heart attacks.

But you know what? I’m not worried.

Sure, it’s an incredibly public mistake. Right before review time.  Visible to important people who control my promotion. And I have to publically issue a retraction. And apologize to my client for my mess-up, since he never would have released the news item if I hadn’t green-lighted it. And I don’t get to be a jackass and hide, or point blame at my client, or in any way deflect my responsiblity.

I‘m not worried, because I’m confident that I’ll be judged not on the fact that it happened, but on how I fix it. The fix — the retraction — is already underway, and I’m managing my SVP’s expectations. My boss is in the loop, and I’m over-communicating to him (insurance he likes).

Bear in mind, my personal brand is protecting me. If I wasn’t a great performer, and if my past actions hadn’t consistently showed I deliver results, prevent problems, fix problems and communicate well, then I would be judged on the fact that I caused the problem.  I think about a couple of my employees, past & present, whom I would have judged very harshly if this had happened on their watch, because they were inconsistent performers and this would have reinforced my perceptions of  spotty performance.

Great performance, a willingness to take partners and consistent ownership of weaknesses & mistakes are like money in the bank: I’ve got a little checkbook balance now I can spend, without being over-drawn.  If I handle the fix well, I might break even or end up with net positive credibility.

But GOOD GRIEF, there’s nothing like public massive fail in an area of strength to really make a gal feel like a million bucks! Plus, I broke my mother’s car key today, the remote-access kind of car key that costs $300 to fix/replace. MASSIVE FAIL.

Guess all I can do is keep on dancing, and laugh a little, so as not to end on a sour note.  HAHAHAHAHA!

10 Free Training Ideas for a Down Economy

Like so many companies, the F50C has been aggressively managing expenses.  One of the practical outcomes is that everyone’s training budgets have been cut back to zero, at least through the first 6 months of 2009.  However, as a management team we are still committed to being career development partners for our employees, and training & continuous learning is an important component of development.  So we’re seeking free and creative ways to connect our team to learning. Here are some that we’re using, and some that I’m just brainstorming – -but if they make sense or I get other ideas in the comments, I’ll use them!

1. Webinars. So many of our vendors and consulting partners routinely offer free webinars via their websites on topics that are actually useful — and a surprising number of them are NOT all about selling us more of the vendor’s product or service.
2. eNewsletters. There are free eNewsletters out there on every topic, from IT to trend forecasting, to market research to career development.  Even Harvard Business Review (boucoup bucks to subscribe to the print version, BTW) offers an eNewsletter with links to the latest HBS research.
3. bNet. While a litte buzwordy, there is genuinely good content on sites like bNet if you care to look for it.  A good place to go for research.  Consider also WSJ’s career site, Change This, 43Folders, blogs on topics in your industry, etc for free content.
4. White papers. Like webinars, many of our vendor & consulting partners offer free white papers for download. Currently I’ve got one in my queue to read tomorrow on developing meaningful performance metrics.
5. Memberships in local chapters. Company is a member in your local chapter of an IT, marketing, sales or etc organization? Go to their local meetings or organize to host the meeting on your campus. You usually get free or cheap great content AND good networking.
6. Read the Book. My company is a member of the Institute of Management Studies (IMS) which puts on really good full-day offsite trainings on a vareity of topics in cities all over the USA.  I routinely scan their site for classes that look good and see if the trainer has a book.  The class is usually about what the book is about — that’s how good x-marketing works.  I always read the book first (from library!) to determine if the class seems worthwhile since the classes are NOT cheap.  In a down economy with no training budget, just the book will have to do.  Besides IMS, there are other training content delivery companies out there – use Google.
7. Cold-contact content owners and barter for their services. We’re trying to stay free, right? Is there an author or industry leader that you’re passionate to learn from? Why not email them and propose a trade, a benchmarking session, a mini-conference, or some other way to put them in touch with you & your team, while giving them back something of value that’s not actually, um, cash.
8. Peer training. Have folks on the team offer brown bags or round-robin training to broaden everyone’s skill set.  Or set up learning groups that meet and dive into topics of interest on a regular basis.
9. Mentoring. Hook everyone on your team up with a mentor in your company or your industry organization, with a specific eye towards working on a developmental opportunity. Or, go out and find your own mentor for the same purpose.
10. Stretch assignments. It’s been proven that 70% of effective adult learning comes from hands-on, on-the-job activity. Or at least that’s what my HR/Organizational Effectiveness departmnet claims, but I believe them.  So make sure every last person on your team has at least one stretch assignment. If you yourself don’t have at least one stretch assignment, ask for it and keep asking until you get it.

How do you get free training content & experiences?

Top 15 Things I Love About My Job

Gee, I’ve been feeling & blogging somewhat a Negative Nancy lately.  Let’s review what I LOVE about my job, for a change!

1. I’m trusted.  My boss told me outright recently to design any kind of flexible/split location/time-shifted schedule I want and that he doesn’t care about face time at all because I’m conscientious and I drive outcomes.
2. People think I add value. Clients have told me they’re glad I’m back from leave because I think strategically, ensure details aren’t dropped, am a powerfully calming influence, provide leadership, and drive outcomes.
3. I love my company culture.  It’s fun, it moves fast, people are nice, people are trendy, the company communication is always on-brand, the internal behavior of the company is just as groovy as the external behavior of the company.
4. Awesome 401k investment options.
5. Healthcare benefits suck. BUT they suck way less than the health care benefits at many of my friends’ firms, including the local health care insurance firm. So perhaps a more correct statement is that healthcare benefits in the USA, in general, suck and yet my firm’s are decent, considering.
6. I like working downtown.  There are a lot of good restaurants for lunch, and shopping is handy.
7. The F50C gives a lot of money to charity.
8. I’m turning out to really like my two+ mile round trip walk every day, to/from daycare, in the skyways.  It is a good stress reliever, mild cardio benefit, and I get to listen to This American Life podcast.
9. We used to be business-casual, and now we’re all SUIT UP.  And it turns out I love wearing a suit every day. It’s a no-brainer uniform that takes all the thinking and all the stupidity out of looking sharp and on-brand every day.
10. If I tell my boss I’m bored, he will fix that for me.
11. If I tell my boss I’m failing, he will help me.
12. Systemically, reviews & performance compensation are mostly merit-based. Instead of who-you-know- or how-much-you-kiss-ass-based.
13. I am still learning a lot. I really believe I am learning things that will help me in my future ventures.
14. When I tell people where I work, they always say, “Oh my god I love that place!”
15. Once, the recently ex-CEO of Carlson Companies even said that to me. No shit!

Can you name 15 things you love about YOUR job?

How I Manage Up

Everyone’s boss is different — we all have our weird blind spots and paranoias and strange weaknesses and hyper-focused strengths.  So my tricks for managing up may not work for you, in fact they probably won’t.  But if my boss ever hires you, you can use these tactics on him.

1.  I debate with him. He likes debate.  He likes to argue the point and the merits.  Once I got some feedback that he & my former director liked me because at the time I was one of the only people pushing back.  That little reinforcement was all I needed to get super comfortable saying, “I completely disagree, and here’s why.”  The real tactic here is that I communicate with him using his preferred style.

2.  I give him direct, relatively blunt constructive feedback. He’s from Jersey, he likes direct communication.  We live in MN, there’s a lot of passive aggressive communication.  I try to be plain & straightforward.  I give direct feedback to him on his performance and style because 1) he’s not very self-reflective and doesn’t always monitor the interpersonal after-effects of his approach.  And 2) he once invited me to give feedback.  The first time I gave it, it felt like a big risk.  But there were no bad consequences to me; in fact he thanked me.  And that encouragement was all I needed to keep doing it.  The real tactic here is that I help identify pain points & friction points, and suggest possible solutions, before they cause trouble.

3.  I demand clear expectations and well-defined, specific desired outcomes. Actually, I need to get better at demanding these things, at the time, in the moment, when the confusion is happening.  He’s strategic, and he’s often thinking out loud at a mile-a-minute clip.  He usually locks onto his desired outcome like a pit bull locking it’s jaw, but often the outcome is not fully baked and it’s up to the rest of us to bake it.  A lot of the time I feel like I’m trying to mind read.  Or, I’ll have to digest our conversation for a while and then go back to say, “This is what I think we discussed, and now that I’ve mulled it over, here’s what I actually think I should do.”  This, more than anything, directly causes most of my stress, so my goal in 2009 is to stand up for myself right in the moment and get specifics and clarifications.  Just like the ROWE people say I should.  The real tactic here is that I [should] insist on specifically defining, and agreeing on, desired outcome and timing. Also I [should] ask for proof/data/objective facts when he makes an assertion that’s way out of left field.

4.  I take abstract, vague ideas and execute them. I take the crazy ideas and make them happen.  Like I said, he’s often stuck in his desired outcome without a clear path to getting there or an understanding of all the steps to take and issues to clear, and a lot of the time he’s lighting a panicky fire to get there.  He’ll be the first to admit, he isn’t organized, task oriented or a process master. (On the HBDI: no green.)  So he hires people like me, who are.  The real tactic here is that I complement his weaknesses with my strengths. Part of the success here is that he hired me to be this complement — however, I spent a lot of time early on figuring out what his strengths & weaknesses were so that I knew where I could add value.

5.  I make sure he recognizes the team. I show off their wins to him, insist he send thank-you’s or notes, nominate them for awards he gives.  Because it’s not a strength of his at all, and because it helps him not be scary.  The real tactic here is just a variant of both #2 and #4.

6.  I make him look good. Because: DUH. His priorities are my priorities. I’ll drop everything to get him a deck for a meeting with his boss or an important client.  I scan his calendar to figure out when big-deal meetings are happening and either offer or ask what he needs. I feed him wins & measureable successes from my team so he can in turn show them off to his boss and partners. I get shit done. I warn him when trouble or stupidity happens, if it’s likely to get back to him — no surprises. The real tactic here is that I make him look good. Dang, I wish my own team would take this one more seriously with me! LOL.

7.  I delegate up. I am not afraid to give a clear request or assignment back up to my own boss.  I particularly like to deploy him when I think some particular action on his part will make it easier for me or my team to cut through an obstacle and move forward.  Becuse our success is his success. Also sometimes I just think there’s something he should be doing, not me. The real tactic here is that I protect the boundaries of my own work, and ask for the resources (usually action from my boss) I need to be successful.

A Little Paranoia

WSJ.com has one of those boilerplate doom-and-gloom economy stories in their career strategies section: Five Signs You May Be on the Layoff List.

In a nutshell,

1. Others are losing their jobs
2. Hiring freeze
3. Training budgets cut, projects slow down
4. Office gossip
5. Company is missing targets

At the F50C, 3 of 5 of these situations are already occurring, and a fourth, #4, is starting in some sectors.

I will be frank here: I stripped back my 401k withholding to just meet the company match, not because I’m concerned about how much I’ve lost in the last two quarters (a lot – but I have a long term view), or about buying equities (in fact now’s a great time to snap up tons of shares on the cheap), but because I want to maximize my cash flow and move those savings rapidly into cash. This is temporary, but:

In case.

In case something goes very wrong.

Because while senior management is not at this time sending any signals into the employee community about layoffs, my industry is extremely sensitive to macroeconomic forces, consumer confidence, and most importantly credit-fueled consumerism. And the latter is not just in practicality impossible for most people at this time, it’s also waaaaay out of vogue.

Also my company, within that industry, is not the low-cost leader nor do we have the low-cost perception among our customers.  We differentiate on style, quality and brand experience.

So I’m moving into cash.

Careful, MFK, that you don’t attract a layoff by dwelling on layoffs. Law of Attraction and all that.

If you were unexpectedly laid off, would you feel a tremendous sense of loss or a tremendous sense of relief? I’m not sure I know my answer to that question!

PS to E: good luck on your interview today!

5 Tips for Setting Performance Goals

I know I’m a little bit of a broken record right now, but I am growing ever more annoyed with our goal-setting process this year.  There is a stronger and more consistent focus on goals, with performance review points assigned, than ever before. Partly this is due to the economy’s effects on the F50C’s financial performance, and partly this is due to a change in leadership at the C-level.

The problem is, as a company and as a pyramid we’ve never been that consistent about setting measurable goals and don’t have a good methodology/discipline about it.  I’m hella glad for the goal focus this year but I’m having a heckuva time trying to wrench my objectives into the weird structure that maps them to my leader’s goals. (His in turn maps to his leader’s goals, and hers to her leader’s and on up to the CEO).  Cascading goals are not a bad idea but the way we’re executing them is wonky. Here is what I know about setting performance goals, and how we are doing at the F50C on each point.

1.  Goals should describe your end state or desired outcome. Most of the goal setting literature agrees with this point.  What will occur, be created, or be different as a result of your activity? How are we doing? Good. From the CEO on down, we are all expected to have goals related to bottom-line deliverables. But take note of my objective point in #2.

2. Objectives are the specific, measurable activities that you plan to undertake to achieve your goal. SMART goals, blah blah blah. If I achieve my objectives I will know my goal is met.  And they’re measurable, so I can prove my goal is met. I’m not signing up for anything not directly impacting my goals, and I’m not undertaking any major work efforts not outlined in my objectives (and thus not prioritized).  How are we doing? Fair. Problem is, everyone from the top on down has strategic objectives as well as goals.  Maybe I’m just stuck on the language, because it’s being used imprecisely.  The strategic objectives are really just squishier goals — goals where the measure of success is more subjective, or possibly where success is just having ‘moved the needle’ on an issue instead of outright solving the issue.  I’m anchored to objectives rolling up under goals, so having a list of strategic objectives with other objectives rolling up under them makes no sense.  See the next point for my further annoyance with these.

3. Objectives MUST be measurable. If you can’t find some kind of specific measure, you can’t set a baseline or a bar. If you have no bar, you can’t define success and you certainly can’t exceed expectations or outperform.  And why on earth would you sign up for something you can’t prove you did? Sure, you might get off without being held accountable or held to task, but the downside of that is that you might also be accused of having done nothing when in fact you did a lot of hard work to great results.  How are we doing? Poor. We seem to be completely let off the hook to measure the strategic objectives. It makes no sense to me. I’m designing measures for all of my objectives no matter whether they are “regular” or “strategic.”

4. There are lots of ways to measure, both objective and subjective.Pass/fail, % achieved, $$ achieved, customer/client/peer/partner satisfaction, movement up a maturity curve, etc.  Use direct measures, surveys, self assessments.  How are we doing? Good. The door appears to be wide open and I can set any measures I want, as long as I can make a reasonable case to do so.

5. Do not boil the ocean. The point of setting goals and objectives is to force you to reflect on what’s very important, and then set a focused plan of action for yourself to achieve that very most important stuff.  Set 3 to 5 goals to keep you focused, and set perhaps 5 to 7 objectives at most for each goal.  Too many goals dilutes what’s important and puts you at risk for diminishing returns vs effort. Focus like a laser, know what a successful outcome looks like, monitor progress, achieve your results, measure your results & compare to your baseline, and then check that sucker off your list. You can always set new goals later when you achieve your current goals. How are we doing? Poor. Today I looked at what my boss just signed up for on Monday and identified which parts of his goals & objectives I own.  I also listed out everything major on my plate.  I combined the two lists.  I wrote out my goals & measurable objectives, outlining them to follow my boss’ goals.  I had to jet to a 4:3o meeting, but by the time I left I was already up to ten goals, a few of which had more than five objectives.  Way too many!  I  feel like everything on my list is important, but I’m not being forced to choose, and my boss/his team is not being forced to choose. Anyone can be great at a few things, but no one can be great at everything. Why would we want to set ourselves up to not be great?
Next steps: I’m going to re-roll and revise tomorrow.  Some items that are separate goals should be collapsed.  For some goals, I’ve got too many objectives and I will get focused and delete some.  I’ll also challenge my boss about whether I should sign up for a couple of things at all.

Bottom line: We are going to be busy in 2009, and with fewer staff and resources!  Having focused, well-crafted goals and objective that directly link to our leadership’s goals should help us work on the right things efficiently, instead of just working more hours.

The Trouble With Strategic Objectives

Much of the time I operate on instinct, and it serves me well, because I have excellent instincts.  I firmly believe that instinct is much more sophisticated than simple “gut feel.” It’s born from data gathered via years of experience, that our higher and subconscious levels of the brain analyze and deliver to us in the package we call instinct.

And I’m very strategic.

So I should love strategic objectives, I should loooooove them like a schoolgirl in a pleated skirt, since they fit my Hermann Brain Dominance profile so well and since they are a kindred spirit to instinct.  (Well, maybe that’s just my brain, but the right strategic choice almost always feel like the right instinctual choice.)

Oh, but I hate them, I’m growing to hate strategic objectives with a passion.  Why? Because they are not measurable.  Oh, sure, you can measure them with some very soft, strategic, instinctual, qualitative type metrics, but in this economy who the hell wants soft outcomes?
We are in the process of setting 2009 goals & objectives at work, and looking at my SVP’s goals, I see she has 60 points allocated to hard goals with measurable, factual bottom-line objectives, and only 20 points allocated to strategic objectives.  (The other 20 points I’m glad to say are team and leadership oriented).  I’m under water compared to her: my job is by nature strategic, so I have far fewer bottom-line, measurable objectives.

My job entails verbs like “align,” “influence,” “synthesize,” “promote” and “expose.”  Most of this stuff doesn’t seem measurable other than on a pass/fail scale. I struggle with doing things like signing up to promote best practices via the stakeholder group — this is a group of 20 or so Level 3 managers — and then attaching a hard measure like “all departments will adopt six best practices,” because a) I don’t own the best practices, I’m just promoting & exposing them and b) I can’t legitimately hold that many people at several pay grades above mine accountable.  All I can actually control is that I promote & expose.

Here’s another example: my boss once put on his annual review the key accomplishment of “getting an enterprise focus on data.”  That’s a direct quote.  And a soft outcome.

I’m tired of not having hard stats on my resume, and I’m tired of not having proof that I accomplished anything or that I outperformed.  How can you outperform when you don’t actually have a bar to raise? My former director and I have a running joke that I used to complain I didn’t know what to put on my review.

Whatever you do, don’t google “how to write measurable strategic objectives.” All you get is the same tired crap about SMART objectives.  I know they need to be measurable.  I just don’t know how to make them legitimately and achieveably measureable.