‘Me’ before ‘We’

KPMG calamity. The leaked recording of Bill Michael telling staff to ‘stop moaning’ about the realities of pandemic working instantly grabbed the international business media’s attention. On the day the news broke, 1,381 pieces of coverage alone were published. Beyond Michael’s resignation, however, the incident offered a fascinating insight into the working conditions at KPMG.
 
What are they talking about? As The Times coverage in the immediate aftermath of Michael’s demise demonstrates, a central focus has been the poor relations between staff and senior management and the role the firm’s ‘forced distribution curve’ or ‘stacked ranking’ appraisal system played in stoking it. As this edition’s contributor, Professor Peter Cappelli, wrote in his 2016 article for Harvard Business Review, methods such as forced ranking — once popularised by the former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch — as well as traditional forms of appraisal were being rapidly abandoned, including by the likes of Adobe, Accenture, and PwC in favour of more novel approaches.
 
Forced ranking systems. Controversy surrounding ‘stacked ranking’ appraisal methods is not new. In a 2012 article, the Financial Times’s Andrew Hill argued the disadvantages of the appraisal system far outweigh its benefits. He observed that its proponents claim it fosters an all-star team and continually raises the bar for performance. Instead, he believes it results in protracted meetings with names being discussed extensively, an increase in staff infighting, and ‘big fish’ syndrome in which those whose talents may simply be ill-matched to their role would be punished. He also believes hirers have little incentive to make good recruiting decisions since any under-performers can be moved on after a year. A culture of short-termism is also fostered as individual’s centre their attention around their annual performance review. Most teams, he argues, improve as they learn to work together, and a lack of continuity from the review impedes this.
 
Team appraisals. Several commentators have instead advocated greater reliance on more frequent team-based appraisal options. Ironically, in a 2014 interview with The Economic Times, Shalini Pillay, Head of People, Performance and Culture at KPMG India outlined how the organization had chosen to abandon a forced ranking system opting instead to rank employees on the basis of their teams. She argued forced rankings are barriers against a collaborative work culture, fostering internal competition. It would seem the memo failed to reach the London office. 
 
A shift away from individual-based appraisals has in some instances seen a shift to more frequent team-based appraisals, which have already been embraced by companies, such as Cisco. The company’s Senior Vice President, Ashley Goodall, has spoken at length about the merits of putting ‘we’ above ‘me’. In an interview published on APQC, Goodall writes that teams are central to company performance and should therefore be allocated significant resources to provide them with feedback and training. This, he states, enhances team interactions which are crucial to company productivity. His analysis is corroborated by a report released by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in 2020, titled: ‘Is Leadership Your Agile Blindspot’ in which the adoption of team-based performance management tools are praised as a means to have all employees prioritise the organization’s goals rather than personal aims. By providing regular team appraisals, each team member can gradually adjust any erratic behaviours to merge with the team, creating a sleek and productive work unit.
 
Collaboration. An explanation for why companies are increasingly adopting team-based performance reviews is that organizations see potential in the power of teams. McKinsey and Company, who, in their 2019 ‘Performance Management in Agile Organisations’ report, highlight how companies that are built on networks of teams within a people-centred culture are more flexible and better equipped for changes on the horizon. Teams, the report says, should set their objectives and goals to boost collaboration within them and to stoke enthusiasm. The Economist’s Bartleby column furthers this by criticising ranked, individual-based appraisals as inciting competition in what should be a co-operative effort.
 
Employee benefits. Those managing teams have to be trained to provide team-based appraisals. Deloitte calculated that individual appraisals waste millions of man hours conducting and that 58 per cent of their HR executives favour new approaches. Managers who become experienced in delivering team-based feedback will be following in the footsteps of companies, including Gap and Sears who, since adopting new performance management systems, have reported higher employee satisfaction and less stress. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal Josh Bersin of Deloitte recommended that bosses can achieve satisfaction by injecting ‘empathetic leadership’ into flagging teams by offering regular feedback to them. Regular feedback with teams, as Lisa Bodell founder and CEO of FutureThink noted in Forbes, maintains employee engagement and keeps the team’s aims within sight.
 
This brings us back to Bill Michael. As the FT’s Andrew Hill points out, bosses without who fail to demonstrate humanity, empathy, and adaptability in their leadership are bound to follow in Michael’s footsteps. Employees value authentic leaders who seek to develop them through regular and effective feedback, not by ranking employees and yanking them from the workforce. Good leaders approach tasks with collegiality and foster a positive environment. Team appraisals are one important step in achieving this. A key challenge, however, is how to provide teams with effective platforms by which they can receive regular feedback and measure their co-operation with their co-workers.
 
Technology, through the use of effective feedback platforms, offers one solution. By providing team members with a platform through which they can individually and, as a team, receive and offer real-time feedback in the form of performance ratings and constructive suggestions for improvement are an essential tool. Online real-time feedback platforms, such as those offered by ViewsHub, deliver easily digestible performance trackers for individual and team performance, offer the facility to boost productivity, encourage effective team working and reduce stress.