The Invisible Republic

By SAMUEL A. CULBERT

It's time to finally put the performance review out of its misery.

This corporate sham is one of the most insidious, most damaging, and yet most ubiquitous of corporate activities. Everybody does it, and almost everyone who's evaluated hates it. It's a pretentious, bogus practice that produces absolutely nothing that any thinking executive should call a corporate plus.

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And yet few people do anything to kill it. Well, it's time they did.

Don't get me wrong: Reviewing performance is good; it should happen every day. But employees need evaluations they can believe, not the fraudulent ones they receive. They need evaluations that are dictated by need, not a date on the calendar. They need evaluations that make them strive to improve, not pretend they are perfect.

Who, Me?

Sadly, most managers are oblivious to the havoc they wreak with performance reviews. To some extent, they don't know any better: This is how performance reviews have been done, and this is how they will be done. Period.

Here's a simple experiment you can try. Ask yourself: How often have you heard a manager say, "Here is what I believe," followed by, "Now tell me, what do you think?" and actually mean it? Rarely, I bet.

The performance review is the primary tool for reinforcing this sorry state. Performance reviews instill feelings of being dominated. They send employees the message that the boss's opinion of their performance is the key determinant of pay, assignment, and career progress. And while that opinion pretends to be objective, it is no such thing. Think about it: If performance reviews are so objective, why is it that so many people get totally different ratings simply by switching bosses?

No, instead, the overriding message is that the boss's assessment is really about whether the boss "likes" you, whether he or she feels "comfortable" with you. None of this is good for the company unless the boss is some kind of savant genius who can read an employee's talents with laser accuracy -- and then understands what motivates the employee so perfectly that he or she can push just the right psychological buttons to get the employee to use those talents.

Unlikely and even more unlikely.

The Damage Done

At this point, you may be asking: So what? So what if you can't speak your mind to your boss? So what if the performance review forces the boss to focus on an employee's "weaknesses" (since most bosses are told they can't give everyone top grades)? What harm does it really do?

Sadly, it does enormous damage. Forget, for a minute, the damage it does on a personal level -- the way it makes work lives miserable, the way it leaves employees feeling depressed and anxious, the way having to show so much tolerance at work leaves them with too little tolerance at home. Just think about what it does on a corporate level, the enormous amount of time and energy it wastes, and the way it prevents companies from tapping the innovative, outside-the-box thinking that so many employees are capable of. If only, that is, they weren't so afraid.

A Better Way

The good news is that none of this is the way things have to be. The one-sided, boss-dominated performance review needs to be replaced by a straight-talking relationship where the focus is on results, not personality, and where the boss is held accountable for the success of the subordinate (instead of just using the performance review to blame the subordinate for any problems they're having).

In this new system, managers will stop labeling people "good guys" and "bad guys" -- or, in the sick parlance of performance reviews, outstanding performers, average performers, and poor performers to be put on notice. Instead, they'll get it straight that their job is to make everyone reporting to them good guys.

If you're a boss, and your subordinate isn't succeeding, something is broken here. Doing more of the same isn't going to cut it. It's now time for you to ask, "What do you need from me to deliver what we are both on the firing line to produce?" And just as important, it's time for you to listen to the answer.

Asking and listening. Imagine that. It's called a conversation, and it's a rarity in workplaces today. Only by hearing what the other person thinks, and putting that person's actions in the appropriate context, can you actually see what the person is saying and doing -- and how together you can get where the company needs you to go.

Adapted from "Get Rid of the Performance Review! How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing – and Focus on What Really Matters." Copyright 2010. By Samuel A. Culbert and Lawrence Rout. Published by Business Plus, and imprint of Grand Central Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Group Inc. All rights reserved.

Performance reviews won't get you there, because that's just about the boss getting the subordinate to buy into his or her way of thinking. It's a mirror -- not a window into the other person. But take away the performance review and you might actually have straight talk.

Rotten Milk

Proponents of performance reviews say that the problem isn't the review itself, but poorly trained reviewers. Sorry, but that doesn't fly: The performance review done exactly as intentioned is just as horribly flawed as the review done "poorly." You can't bake a great cake with rotten milk, no matter how skilled the chef. They also say you need performance reviews to protect against lawsuits by laid-off workers. Nonsense: Most performance reviews hurt a company's case because they aren't honest assessments of a worker's performance.

Also, before you start griping about how I don't understand Margaret, the woman in your department who wants to do as little work as possible, or how Tom is so distracted by his life outside the office that he can't get anything done at work, let me stop you and say: I know that not everybody deserves to stay in their jobs. Getting rid of performance reviews doesn't get rid of slackers. Not everybody will leap at the chance to get better and grow.

But everybody deserves the best shot managers can give them. And they can't get that shot with performance reviews.

This was the weekend those of us with high standards lost their remaining residue of patience for ideologues who hyperbolize about open systems without actually creating something people want to use.

The iPad is a new thing. It doesn’t replace your computer. You use it when you don’t want the whole computer, and when your phone isn’t enough. It’s a new tool. You don’t have to get one – you can use other tools and get stuff done. But it makes stuff easier, and faster, and readier to hand.

Remember how PC’s got adopted in the first place? You had a few enthusiastic users who bought business PC’s with their own money or robbed Peter to pay for them, and everyone thought they were silly toys until they were in a turf war and their secretaries were sending hand-typed memos and their rivals had PageMaker and PowerPoint. It’ll be like that again. 90% if success is showing up, and part of that is showing up with enough computing power to get the job done.

Jesus fuck. That this man was elected to Congress at all is a travesty.

I understand the importance the resurrection story holds in your particular religion. If I too knew some guy that had been killed and placed inside a cave with a rock in front of it and I visited the cave to find the rock moved and his body gone, the only logical assumption would be that he had risen from the dead and is the son of God. Once, my friend Simon was rushed to hospital to have his appendix removed and I visited him the next day to find his bed empty. I immediately sacrificed a goat and burnt a witch in his name but it turned out that he had not had appendicitis, just needed a good poo, and was at home playing Playstation.

So let's recap: AP said Thursday that at least 10 congressional Democrats now have reported threats and menacing harassment, including incidents at their offices in New York, Arizona and Kansas. Others, including antiabortion healthcare supporter Bart Stupak, have received death threats, and an undisclosed number of lawmakers have been given increased police protection. Into that climate of real danger, Cantor inserted his own easily disproven claim of violence. And that's not all he did: He accused Democrats of increasing the risk of violence against themselves by complaining about it. "By ratcheting up the rhetoric, some will only inflame these situations to dangerous levels," Cantor claimed. "Enough is enough. It has to stop."

That part Cantor is right about: It has to stop. But don't look to any GOP leaders to make sure it does.

This is what you've become, Republicans. If you are a Republican, your allegiance to the party and your failure to denounce this increasing climate of political violence makes you just as guilty of it.