This week we finished Radical Candor by discussing the bonus chapter (in the revised and updated edition of the book) entitled “A Radically Candid Performance Review.”
- “The biannual or annual review is performance management, which is different from developmental feedback!”
- We discussed why there are two different cadences; developmental feedback you need closer to the work you’re doing, and performance feedback is over a longer cycle so you can observe trends. Houston said this was analogous to not weighing yourself every day.
1. Rating or No Rating
- “There is a growing school of thought that ratings are inherently flawed, and indeed there is evidence that they often reveal more about the rater than the ratee, and that they discourage risk-taking by being overly punitive when risks taken don’t pan out.”
- “They can play a vital role in providing transparency into the decision-making process behind bonuses, promotions, and firings.”
2. Categories of Ratings
- “If you’re able to identify three or four effective categories, you will simultaneously help your managers zero in with a bit more thought on areas that need work, and provide employees with a clearer sense of why they have or haven’t received the compensation or promotion they deserved.”
3. Job Ladders
- Geoff and others found this section underwhelming. It had the potential to discuss ways to make it better, then left it as an exercise for the reader.
- “A job ladder shouldn’t be written like a false promise you can’t keep: if you do these things, you’ll get promoted.”
- Dennis has never worked at a company with a job ladder. We talked about companies we’ve worked for and their different career paths.
4. Number of Ratings
- “Also, when managers have too many ratings at their disposal they tend to try to show an uptick every review to make the person ‘feel’ like they are improving. This is not performance management, it’s BS, a false sense of progress.”
- “Since performance invariably has its ups and downs, some people will have a down quarter and if that isn’t reflected in the ratings then managers are using them to measure time in a role and not performance.”
- “Here’s the rating grid that reflects my recommendations. Again, don’t just adopt it. You’ll have to figure out what works best given your situation, and with input from diverse stakeholders. And don’t use such generic words as the ones I’m using.” Ratings: “Not OK / OK for Now / Good / Great”
- Houston thought it makes sense to address even a single “Not OK” item on your review.
5. Language of Ratings
- “You could simply use numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4. … However, my general feeling is that words humanize what is a potentially alienating process.”
- Dennis said that whatever the language is, it needs to be consistent at a minimum across the group (i.e., all of your reports should be using the same language). Ideally this should be applicable company-wide.
- Make the statements you rank people on the same per role; however, not every role requires the same skills (e.g., front-end automation tester vs. back-end load tester).
- Jamie worked at a company that had one large set of characteristics, and depending how well you rated, that determined your worthiness for promotion.
- Geoff mentioned having a baseline set of characteristics per role, then tailoring per individuals based on what they’re doing in their current position (e.g., front-end, back-end). Jamie said this approach makes it difficult to say how they’d get promoted. Geoff countered with that you’d need to also tailor the feedback so that those expectations are properly managed; that is, highlight the gap between “here” and “there,” then make it clear how the employee can traverse that gap.
6. Consequences of Ratings
- “It’s also important to manage the natural reaction to ratings: dwelling on the negative instead of the positive. So it’s important to emphasize that the employee isn’t alone, the manager will help them improve. It’s also important to look for opportunities to adjust a person’s role to fit their strengths (or offer them a role for which they are better suited).”
- “Part of what guides Radical Candor is a hope that people will excel in meaningful work. So what does this mean for people who consistently do OK for Now work in all categories but never show much improvement? Ideally, these people should be helped to find a role where they can excel. And nobody whose work is rated OK for Now should be promoted. A condition for promotion should be a majority of Great ratings consistently over time.”
- Houston: What happens if you have everything you need (e.g., money, tasks you like doing); what do you ask for? This led to further discussions about not being promoted into management just because you deserve a promotion. It’s also possible to go be a rock star at another company for slightly more money, if that’s important to you.
- “But people rarely do their best work with handcuffs on.”
- Jameson asked whether rating systems should be segregated from promotions? That is, don’t use how you rate them as a guideline for promotion: Use it as a baseline for how they’re doing in their current job. If they want to move up, compare the stretch with the current role (i.e., what you haven’t rated them on). Do a gap analysis and work with them on how they’d fill that gap.
- We all agreed on the “you vs you” performance measurement system. In other words, don’t compare your performance to others: Compare yourself to your own past performance to measure the differences.
- There is no one right answer on how to handle ratings; it depends on the company at a certain point in time.
- Golden handcuffs — there’s a balance between paying enough to attract talent, but then those people may not leave when they no longer like the work.
7. Distribution of Ratings
(No comments in this section.)
8. Forced Curve or No
“Volumes have been written about the evils of the forced curve. The unintended consequences and political gaming of a forced curve are terrible.”
9. Calibration of Ratings
“Calibration meetings are key for two reasons. The first is transparency fairness. They keep managers honest if they know they have to defend their ratings in front of peer managers and even higher management levels. The second is guidance for new managers. These meetings are a great way to learn about performance expectations and even cultural norms.”
10. Frequency
“Never doing performance reviews is a bad idea. However, doing them every quarter heavily taxes managers, and doesn’t give employees much time to show improvement from the last rating cycle. So, my recommendation: do it twice a year.” As of this reading, Lirio is doing quarterly reviews. Make them lighter weight so that you do them more often. The longer you go between formal feedback cycles, the longer it takes to move the needle.
11. “360-degree” Performance Process vs. Relying on a Manager’s Unilateral Assessment
“I’d recommend simply asking employees to rate their peers on each of the four criteria; no need to write anything for OK for Now or Good ratings; ask them to write no more than seventy-five words for Not OK and Great ratings.”
12. Transparent or Confidential
- “Confidential feedback does not encourage people to Challenge Directly, and it often hurts on the Care Personally dimension of Radical Candor as well. People are often more obnoxiously aggressive when they are anonymous.”
- [Downsides to confidential feedback] “…it doesn’t force peers to have direct conversations with each other. … managers have to read and synthesize all the peer feedback for all employees, since it isn’t transparent to them.”
- “Also, the sooner you start teaching people how to write good feedback, the better and more useful it will be.”
13. Lightweight or Heavyweight
- “It wasn’t as though the demands of the business slowed down just because it was review season. That meant there were four weeks each year when everyone practically had a second job, and was in a foul mood.”
- “The manager should be able to fill in the review form for each employee in under thirty minutes.”