{"id":680,"date":"2008-01-02T23:25:28","date_gmt":"2008-01-02T23:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/another-year-an\/"},"modified":"2008-01-02T23:25:28","modified_gmt":"2008-01-02T23:25:28","slug":"another-year-an","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/another-year-an\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Year, Another Annual Performance Review, Another Yawn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I know its early, but annual performance reviews\/appraisals are just around the corner.&nbsp; What fond memories I have of these dances-not!<\/p>\n<p>I heard once that Steve Jobs had a habit of going around to Apple employees and asking them to justify their existence in the organization.&nbsp; I don&#8217;t know if this is true or not, but I think there are a number of managers that would benefit from an interaction like that one.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>What value does the employee gain from the experience of annual performance reviews?&nbsp; Not much if they work for an organization that allows managers to do it only once a year.&nbsp; In fairness to a number of managers, they&#8217;re so overwhelmed with meetings, reports and power point presentations, that effectively leading their people is nothing more than an afterthought.&nbsp; Sort of like our physical and mental health; we don&#8217;t have time to strengthen our bodies because we&#8217;ve got a career to manage.&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Annual performance reviews should be reinforcement of what has been discussed and inspired over the previous year.&nbsp; A former business partner (direct report in corporatese) and I had some of the quickest annual conversations you could imagine.&nbsp; Since we communicated on a regular basis (at least three times per week), we knew what the state of the State was.&nbsp; Some may ask how I had the time to do this.&nbsp; It was hard and yet simple; know what&#8217;s important and be allegiant to that person, event, project, etc.&nbsp; That meant that all the other stuff would have to wait.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s how to make your annual performance review effective and inspiring:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Do your annual reviews every week.&nbsp; This makes the final one clear on your part and the person you&#8217;re leading. <\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t insult the intelligence of your people by pretending your interested, if you haven&#8217;t been all year.&nbsp; <\/li>\n<li>Inject some humility into your management\/leadership blood if the second bullet describes you. <\/li>\n<li>If you&#8217;re on the receiving end of an unprepared or a never-spoke-much-in-the-previous-year type review, then start asking yourself some hard questions about your employer and\/or boss. <\/li>\n<li>The review should add fuel to the fire of the organization&#8217;s and the employee&#8217;s vision.&nbsp; It should not be a dance-for-bonus charade.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you&#8217;re the employee who received a poorly executed review, just remember that IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT.&nbsp; Trust me, it is not your fault.&nbsp; Corporate America has some serious issues here and you may be like a former colleague I saw over the holidays; he fired his boss. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I know its early, but annual performance reviews\/appraisals are just around the corner.&nbsp; What fond memories I have of these dances-not! I heard once that Steve Jobs had a habit of going around to Apple employees and asking them to justify their existence in the organization.&nbsp; I don&#8217;t know if this is true or not,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,170],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-commentary","category-management"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.epicliving.com\/epic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}