In The Hunger Games series the overlords keep rule over the people by conducting an annual battle to the death between adolescent representatives from each of the 12 districts of Panem. The Hunger Games are battles designed to lethally weed out the weak and reward the winner with eternal glory. The organisers manipulate the game so that any attempt to forge alliances is punished and blood-thirsty competition is encouraged. Does this environment bring out the best in people? It certainly focuses the mind on what it takes to survive but at the cost of everyone else. It seems that in the corporate world we have adopted a similar philosophy and baked it into our performance management systems.
I was in Africa recently helping a client with their people driven transformation. The subject of performance management came up. They told me that the culture in Africa is centred around relationships and African people are quick to become good friends with their colleagues. The adoption of western performance management techniques of force ranking to a bell curve, giving tough feedback and managing out the bottom performers is at odd to their values yet African companies face pressure into adopting such practices since this is what is taught in Business Schools and deemed to be best practice.
I am all for objective setting as it provides alignment and when used well gives a clear sense of priority. It allows employees to see how their work fits into the overall purpose of the company. However I do not see individual objective setting as an effective mechanism for driving performance. In fact I would argue that current practices are counter-productive. If an employee knows there is a finite number of ratings at each appraisal rating level and there is a fixed bonus pool that will be allocated out based on each rating then they are less not more likely to collaborate for success. Just like the participants in the Hunger Games someone else’s loss is their gain.
The highest performing teams are typically in sport or the military where teams win or lose collectively and there is far less emphasis on individual performance management. It is time for corporates to start to rethink how to get the best from their employees collectively. Leaders need to stop thinking like 19th Century industrialists assuming that workers will try and do as little as possible and start to create environments where everyone can do their best work.
And to my new friends in Africa I would suggest that you should stop trying to emulate Western practices and develop a performance management system that celebrates the African relationships that are at the heart of your culture and not destroy them. Then we can all learn from you.
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Paul Cobban 