Most of the performance appraisal meetings seem to be a farce. Promotions / increments are predecidedones and have no relation of whatsoever with the so-called erformance aporaisal meetings.
Mr Sunder Rajan's article is mere theoritical and have no link with the real-life /practical situations.
His srticle is a good one to clear Management examination.
well....we all talk about the painful experience we had with the appraisal process....but one thing the bare truth is "Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent".Guys, just think how much time you spent in upgrading yourself with new methodology, practices and tools; not much right bcoz you are busy sharpening the skills that you posses from the time you started your career (so, is it that you never deserved a promotion).Bull's eye we found the solution.....very simple and can be put in below steps: 1. Find out the weak area in your project/business/task. I am sure there are lot of them which were never looked upon due to lack of knowledge and expertise within the team over that area. 2. Yes, the "Eklavya way"--{not the movie (catch it on 16thFEB2007) but the Mahabharata tale} Just start learning about the weak area, gather information from any where and every where (this web world is best source) and upgrade your knowledge, make yourself skilled on it. And yes, this you have to do very silently (don't even tell this to your wife) and within fixed time line. (That you appraisal hungry people can very well estimate) 3. Once confident, start shooting your newly acquired skill to other employees through emails, memo and may be fax too. Start projecting yourself as master of the newly acquired skill and start the process of improving the weak area. 4. Take initiative and brain storm with other team members to come up with ideas on how to improve the weak area, mind you, here you have to use the knowledge you acquired to establish yourself as the master. 5. Once you see any idea working, dig deep into it and document every thing and propose the solution (give credit to the person who gave the idea) and its implementation. 6. No No don't stop you are the one who will take lead and implement the idea till it's in concrete shape. 7.Promote promote yourself as the one who made the WEAK area within the team so STRONG that it's now culminated to INCREASED PRODUCTIVITY and is making way for OTHER IMPROVEMENTS(mind you ,here is the stage for the next appraisal).
I know many of these mentioned herein might be valid is many cases, but don't ge the assumption that it's true always. I've been managing teams for several years now and I always go into the appraisal discussion with enough preparation.
I believe the most common error managers make is not communicating properly the reasons about the decision made after appraisal.
RE:Not always true
by Manohar R on Feb 08, 2007 10:07 AM Permalink
There is nothing to be true or not true about the things written here. All of us can see it happening with our very own eyes. What is there a manager is not communicating clearly when he is giving a preferential treatment to one person in the team which is visible in anything and everything on a day-to-day basis??
It is best to understand that we are living in a perfect "IMPERFECT" world, thou it is bitter to digest the fact, it is always better to gulp this idea. All these management jargons like appraisal, performance etc are farce and tools in the hands of managers (they are like the spanners used to fix or release the nuts with a very minimal effort) and brand the way they want.
In my first job , I was the best performer for 3 consecutive years with spl. Performance Cheques and appraisal letters from sr. vice president(SVP) and tons of work( almost 50% of 7 member team) But I was fooled, there was another parallel plot started after first year, SVP%u2019s acquaintance(X) joined the team and my boss(who reports to SVP) made sure X always have a rating better than the best.(his technique was put a deadline for appraisal submission forms ,collect all forms, see who ever scores the best and ask X to submit a fresh form with clues on rating giving lame excuses like %u201Cur form is lost%u201D, %u201Cu messed up the form%u201D , at one instance , he made sure X fills the form with pencil and helped X in erasing and scribble the numbers. even today X is a good friend of mine and did not knew all these went thru.
At the time of promotion, my name was not even considered on the ground that I lack what is called %u201CQuality%u201D, which cannot be measured and I was never informed before about my lack of quality. When I escalated , all I could get was a couple of verses from bhagavat gita like %u201C karmaney vaadhika%u2026.%u201D ( do ur work with out expecting result%u2026..)
Folks, be wise, work to the fullest, leave ur office work/junk in office and go home peacefully. Do not expect anything from ur beloved boss or esteemed organization. Enjoy good health and family life. Try all these gimmicks to creep the ladder, but always fall back to the famous verse from bhagavat gita %u201Ckarmaney vaadhika%u2026.%u201D
RE:Climb the ladder of hierarchy
by Smart Fool on Feb 07, 2007 05:10 PM Permalink
Appraisal are a bunch of lies which both the supervisor and the employee mutually agree they are lies and the supervisor rates only the employee's lies as to how good or bad the lies were :))
It doesn't matter whether you have achieved or not achieved something. It does matter for your immediate manager to like you. Only then he will recommend your name for a promotion.
In my current team, there is a guy M who is my manager's favourite and been with the company for 1 year. There is another guy R who is not a favourite and been in the company for more than 2 years. Now this guy M who is the manager's fav has resigned from the company. The manager tried to retain him by offering him things like, sending him to US for short trips regularly, at some point he will transfer this guy M from India to US office. etc. But good for us the M guy is going away for good.
Sometime back when the R guy went and asked the manager to move him to another project coz the current project is complete. The manager said that there are no new projects where he can be used so he has to wait for a month or so to be assigned a new project.
The manager can't give work to a guy in the company who is with the company still coz he doesn't like him that much but willing to do anything for a guy whom the manager likes and who is decided to leave the company.
My manager doesn't care about doing something better than what it is for today for the people who are still in the team. Instead he is ready to go everything under the sun to keep the M guy from not going away because he likes this M guy.
If your manager likes you, you get good appraisal reviews with may be salary hike, promotion, overseas project etc. what not. If you happen to be the unfortunate that your manager does like you then you have to wait in order to even get new work assigned to you.
RE:It doesn't matter
by azam khan on Feb 07, 2007 05:11 PM Permalink
completely agree with this thoughts.Its true and it is organization wide practice without any solution
RE:It doesn't matter
by Ganpat Rai on Feb 07, 2007 03:24 PM Permalink
You're right... It's a fact, and this is where the "dirty politicians" get a chance to start screwing the works, while the honest workers get a raw deal.
