When best practices aren't good enough: Putting the performance review on review

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It's one of the toughest—and most important—questions in business: How do you mobilize and unleash the best gifts of every single person in your organization? And how do you create an environment and systems for work that ignite extraordinary passion, imagination, and initiative?

Few leaders would discount that imperative, yet it's still remarkable to encounter an organization in which people practices are built around human flourishing rather than designed to satisfy systems. Which is why it's so refreshing and instructive to spend a little time with the companies and individual represented in our outstanding batch of semifinalists for the HCI Human Capital M-Prize. They offer up so many insights and lessons for our collective project at the MIX.

This article was originally posted on the Management Innovation eXchange (MIX), an open innovation project aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century.

Take, for instance, the eight-year-old Australian software company Atlassian. Founded with the intent to become "a different kind of software company," Atlassian has also developed a very different way of working. The result: the company stands out as much for its fresh, energetic, relentlessly clever approach to engaging and unleashing people as it does for the software development and collaboration tools it makes.  

"Public by Default"

Start with Atlassian's set of distinct, homegrown (and frankly expressed) values. The first on the list is "Open company, no bullshit—Atlassian embraces transparency wherever at all practical, and sometimes where impractical." Many companies advertise their "openness" these days, but few bake it in as deeply as Atlassian. In a flip of standard organizational procedure, the company makes all information (whether internal or external) "public by default."

A remarkable case in point is the company's ongoing experiment in putting the performance review on review. In August of 2010, Joris Luijke, Atlassian's global head of talent, announced a 12-month "public trial" of the company's approach to performance reviews. Luijke and his colleagues not only decided to “rip apart” the obligatory annual time-sink with its dreaded distribution curve, forced rankings, and underwhelming impact—they committed to running their experiment openly and sharing their learnings with the world (you can learn more in Luijke's MIX story)

Atlassian's radical openness not only reflects a spirit of generosity, but also an intrepid practicality. When Luijke says, "Let us be your guinea pig!"—he's acknowledging that when it comes to tackling the most entrenched and dysfunctional aspects of organizational life, no single company or practitioner can solve the problem alone. (And those who share the most are bound to learn the most.)

In just six months, that exuberant approach to experimentation has yielded a compelling blueprint for a lightweight performance review model built on continuous coaching with a strong basis in the science of motivation and engagement—and some signature idiosyncratic flourishes.

"Nothing to Copy"

That's a major leap forward in less than a year. As Luijke recounts, despite the best intentions (and best practices), Atlassian's original approach to performance reviews resulted in less than glowing reviews:

"Twice a year the model did exactly the opposite to what we wanted to accomplish," he says. "Instead of an inspiring discussion about how to enhance people's performance, the reviews caused disruption, anxiety, and de-motivated team members and managers. Also, even though our model was extremely lean and simple, the time investment was significant."

Transforming the performance review would take something better than "best practice." Luijke observed, "We found nothing out there to copy." So he and his team set apart inventing an approach that would energize and engage—rather than deplete and demoralize—Atlassian's people. Some key elements:

  • Rip apart the traditional performance review (replace it with a series of monthly one-on-one meetings with a rotating agenda of "check-ins" and scrap ratings and the distribution curve)
  • Replace individual performance bonuses with top-market salaries, an organizational bonus, and stock options
  • Re-design the review into "bite-sized chunks" of guided coaching conversations (focus on strengths)
  • Honest feedback without ratings—evaluate exceptional performance on a continuum of "never to always" and ask the question "how often have you stretched yourself"
  • Peer feedback and rewards

People want to work with you—not for you

Luijke and his team will continue to test and design new mechanisms for reviewing performance, but they may have turned the crucial corner already. By recasting the performance review as an ongoing conversation set inside regular working relationships, the Atlassian folks have reinforced one of their core values: "We want all Atlassians to feel like they work with Atlassian, not for Atlassian." That's a distinction that makes a world of difference in organizations where too many people feel subject to rules, acted upon by "superiors," and victims of the system.

Every leader is under pressure today to awaken and deliver the full initiative, imagination and passion of every person in his or her organization (and even beyond the walls of the organization). And there's no more compelling call to talented people than a cause they can believe in. When you really mean it, "Join us" is a powerfully effective invitation to engaged performance. Yet, so many of the practices and processes that rule our daily working experience reinforce divisions (labor/management, creative/operations, executive class/front line) rather than invite solidarity.

Performance reviews represent just one skirmish in the war against the unhealthy and artificial power dynamic that is a legacy of the industrial era. For its part, Atlassian is constantly inventing and refining practices to unite and ignite its people (such as the quarterly "Fedex Days," during which employees get 24 hours to work—and deliver—on a passion project, chronicled by Dan Pink in his essential book, Drive). But more than better practices, Luijke and his colleagues understand that the real key to building organizations that are fit for human beings is to start with a better question: How do we design systems and support work that enlist people as drivers of their own destiny?

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Polly LaBarre is the editorial director of the MIX (Management Innovation eXchange), a pioneering open innovation project dedicated to reinventing management for the 21st century.

1 Comment

I've found at most companies the review process is well intentioned when it is created. Only after it's gone through a cycle or two does it become more of a checkbox affair so HR can say it has achieved X% compliance to some goal. At that point the reviews are no long to look back at last years performance and to set meaningful goals for next year but something to just hurry through so you can get back to work. Some review process are better than others but unless the reviews are useful to both the employee AND the employer then they just end up being a distraction, de-motivator and a waste of time.

I am intrigued by Atlassian's journey to find a better system and their journey to find a review that benefits the individual, the team and the company.

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