I morphed this newsletter from being solely about software design to being my general blog. I feel a little bait-and-switch-ee, especially with all you paying subscribers, to offer you one thing & then deliver something else. Now seems a good time to inform you about what all topics you may be seeing soon. (Use Sections to choose what posts you see.)
The systems thinking/learning-organization/Deming people worked on comp/performance review alignment stuff. When I finally got down to their answers, I experienced enlightenment.
Of course this never caught on.
Peter R. Scholtes laid it out in The Leader's Handbook in 1998. Very thick, interesting book full of congruent advice for leaders looking to work in "the new way," including long sections about performance review, with a lot of specific discussion. I don't want to do it a disservice by boiling it down too far, but here's how it ends:
"What I have proposed in this chapter is that there is no right way to do performance appraisal. Performance appraisal is inherently the wrong thing to do. It is derived from the most inhumane instincts of people and it hurts both those who are evaluated and, in the long run, those who evaluate. It provides no demonstrable benefit to the organization or its customers.
"Those who would insist in practicing performance appraisal must accept the burden of proving that, first, it does no harm and, second, it makes a demonstrable, conclusive, positive contribution."
The details are a long road to accepting that all "merit" pay is capricious, and that non-capricious, objective elements are necessary to enable collaboration and remove the harmful effects of capricious systems of leadership. The book urges separating the ideas of performance and pay entirely, because performance is not about luring people into giving forth some otherwise hidden reserve by dangling incentives.
Fully rejecting the idea that people who are "better" at something should be paid more was tough for me. Merit pay is deep in our cultural bones. I think I'm better than a lot of people at what I do, and it's wrenching to let go of the idea that I should be paid more, praised more, etc, as a result. But very serious people have grappled with this enough that I am convinced it's not just a flight of fancy.
I would rather have an impact on things that matter, I would rather see people raising each other up and working together in joy, than get paid more than other people doing similar work.
The happiest places I've been, pay and performance evaluation was the furthest from everyone's mind. As they decayed away from that "everyone's just a software engineer, we get periodic raises that are basically fine, and mostly don't think about it, even as we step between teams and roles" ideal, things became worse in a way that I don't think is a coincidence.
I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on this, though. I think if we're really going to see an XP-enabled or post-XP revolution now, it's going to come from people with XP experience building and influencing organizations that are now small, or don't yet exist. And those people need to have an intellectual and practical toolkit available to reach for that is not the conventional model when their people start asking them for career ladders and feedback, because what they'll get will destroy the potential of scaling the greatness of the organization.
I have come to the same conclusion--performance feedback should be near-real-time & have nothing to do with compensation. This requires a lot of investment by the company--in a growing company most managers are either new to management or new to the company. It's not new ideas we need, it's new marketing/framing/totems.
At the same time humans crave social order & also a sense of progression. How to meet those needs without the ritual sodomy of performance appraisal is what I'm seeking.
The systems thinking/learning-organization/Deming people worked on comp/performance review alignment stuff. When I finally got down to their answers, I experienced enlightenment.
Of course this never caught on.
Peter R. Scholtes laid it out in The Leader's Handbook in 1998. Very thick, interesting book full of congruent advice for leaders looking to work in "the new way," including long sections about performance review, with a lot of specific discussion. I don't want to do it a disservice by boiling it down too far, but here's how it ends:
"What I have proposed in this chapter is that there is no right way to do performance appraisal. Performance appraisal is inherently the wrong thing to do. It is derived from the most inhumane instincts of people and it hurts both those who are evaluated and, in the long run, those who evaluate. It provides no demonstrable benefit to the organization or its customers.
"Those who would insist in practicing performance appraisal must accept the burden of proving that, first, it does no harm and, second, it makes a demonstrable, conclusive, positive contribution."
The details are a long road to accepting that all "merit" pay is capricious, and that non-capricious, objective elements are necessary to enable collaboration and remove the harmful effects of capricious systems of leadership. The book urges separating the ideas of performance and pay entirely, because performance is not about luring people into giving forth some otherwise hidden reserve by dangling incentives.
Fully rejecting the idea that people who are "better" at something should be paid more was tough for me. Merit pay is deep in our cultural bones. I think I'm better than a lot of people at what I do, and it's wrenching to let go of the idea that I should be paid more, praised more, etc, as a result. But very serious people have grappled with this enough that I am convinced it's not just a flight of fancy.
I would rather have an impact on things that matter, I would rather see people raising each other up and working together in joy, than get paid more than other people doing similar work.
The happiest places I've been, pay and performance evaluation was the furthest from everyone's mind. As they decayed away from that "everyone's just a software engineer, we get periodic raises that are basically fine, and mostly don't think about it, even as we step between teams and roles" ideal, things became worse in a way that I don't think is a coincidence.
I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts on this, though. I think if we're really going to see an XP-enabled or post-XP revolution now, it's going to come from people with XP experience building and influencing organizations that are now small, or don't yet exist. And those people need to have an intellectual and practical toolkit available to reach for that is not the conventional model when their people start asking them for career ladders and feedback, because what they'll get will destroy the potential of scaling the greatness of the organization.
I have come to the same conclusion--performance feedback should be near-real-time & have nothing to do with compensation. This requires a lot of investment by the company--in a growing company most managers are either new to management or new to the company. It's not new ideas we need, it's new marketing/framing/totems.
At the same time humans crave social order & also a sense of progression. How to meet those needs without the ritual sodomy of performance appraisal is what I'm seeking.