Many organizations have either just finalized their yearly objective review or are just going into it. You know what that means: Feedback and managerial conversations are just around the corner. Boy, do many of us dread this time of the year?

I can’t tell you how many of my managers and employees in HR asked me through the years, “Seriously, can’t we just ignore the whole thing?” The answer is a big fat NO! ☺  We’d like to tell you why…

No matter what sort of organizational and individual performance management processes your organization has in place, feedback is critical. Academic and corporate research tells us (I/O psychologists, that is, but also to the world of management and work) we all need feedback to flourish in our private and professional lives.

For one, we humans perform better under a healthy tension. Yes, you heard it right. We are complex beings and quite adaptive. For us to perform at a desired level, we need a fair dose of comfort, safety, and security vs. a fair dose of fear, anxiety, and excitement.

Per Richard Barrett of the Barrett Values Centre, “Humans have developed six ways of making decisions—instincts, subconscious beliefs, conscious beliefs, values, intuition, and inspiration.“

The difference between the first three and the second three is vast. The shift to value-based decision making marks the shift from belief-based decision-making to value-based decision, which requires individuation.

“Prior to individuation we make meaning of our world through our beliefs and most of these beliefs have to do with our personal and cultural upbringing,” he says. Or, in other words, our past. Individuation involves examining these beliefs and letting go of the ones that don’t serve us—something that becomes more and more important with the fast pace of changes we experience in our world. As we let go of these beliefs, we could develop a new guidance system based on our deeply held values that allows us to create a future that resonates deeply with who we are, the world we want to live in, and value we can offer.

What triggers this sort of shift? Feedback, of course. ☺

Secondly, individual motivation is mostly affected by positive reinforcement.

Professor Dan Ariely of Duke University has great research on this. In several of his books and articles, Dr. Ariely explains what motivates us at work and how it is not all about monetary rewarding.

Social factors such as gratitude play a substantial role in happiness and motivation at work. In a 2011 review of 50 studies on workplace motivation, for instance, Dr. Ariely and others found that people tend to work harder when they felt like their work was being appreciated.

“We find that financial incentives may indeed reduce intrinsic motivation and diminish ethical or other reasons for complying with workplace social norms such as fairness,” said Bernd Irlenbusch of the London School of Economics Department of Management.

This is not to say that fair pay isn’t important, of course. It is. The point is that money is not the only, or even the best, motivator for employees. For more information on motivational factors at work, you can watch Dr. Ariely’s TEDx Talk here.

Third, feedback unlocks creativity, change and innovation. As Ken Blanchard once said, “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” By applying 80/20 rules of evolving, individuals and organizations that seek feedback end up producing longer lasting, more impactful results. The majority of people do not want to hear we have room to evolve. Realistically, though, if someone didn’t tell you what you do well and/or what you can improve, how would you move forward?

Finally, feedback can facilitate self-management and learning. When humans sense someone ‘cares’ enough to share with them their idea of a better self, they are often touched. This is about personal fulfilment and satisfaction as much as it is about our desire to be recognized. Just-in-time feedback at healthy doses makes us “be better,” psychologically speaking.

As pointed out in an academic study¹, the key here is that organizations need to strike a balance between encouraging learning and encouraging performance through feedback. In other words, the ‘how’ of providing feedback matters a lot. There is something called “detrimental” feedback, which would have the opposite impact on performance rate.

So, professionals and, certainly, people managers must be taught how to share productive feedback. And many organizations from GE to Deloitte to Target to Adobe have already started to leave behind traditional ways of managing performance, focusing more on feedback and coaching, which is great to see!

Ready to embrace feedback then? In their book High-Performing Self-Managed Work Teams: A Comparison of Theory to Practice, Dale Yeatts and Clyde Hayten point out specific factors that make feedback stick. We have summarized the reading for you in a tool format, which you can find here.

If you have more questions, please subscribe to our YouTube channel for short tip videos we share with people managers.

¹ Dr Frederik Anseel, Department of Personnel Management and Work and Organizational Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000 Ghent, Belgium

By Sandro Krug

A lot has happened in the area of performance management since the 1940s, when the U.S. military created a merit-rating system to flag and dismiss poor performers.

In the 1960s McGregor argued in his famous book, “The Human Side of Enterprise,” that employees should set their performance goals and assess themselves with the feedback from their managers. His basic idea was that you either have to motivate people with material rewards and punishments (Theory X) or anticipate that people want to perform well, and would do so if they are respected and supported appropriately (Theory Y). Today this approach seems to be too simplified, and more sophisticated theories have emerged in the last decades.

Jack Welch’s bell curve became omnipresent and popular in the 1980s when the then-CEO of General Electric started to divide his workforce into “A” (reward them), “B” (accommodate them), and “C” players (dismiss them).

When Welch left General Electric in 2001 the company was confronted with a highly competitive workforce which almost undermined collaboration among its employees.

Where do we stand today?

According to Globoforce and the Society for HR Management (SHRM), 45% of HR leaders don’t think annual performance reviews are an accurate appraisal of their employees’ work. And 42% of them don’t think employees are rewarded fairly for their job performance.

Although often controversially discussed more than 15 years later, many companies still rate their workforce along the Gaussian principles and distribute performance, behavior, and other relevant enterprise factors along the well-known (and, frankly, easy to understand) framework. Managers do this the best they can and their supervisors often (have to) rely on their initial assessment.

New generations require new models

Having sat at the table of numerous performance appraisal discussions in the last decade, it’s my conclusion that many leaders struggle with this approach. It seems that Welch’s heritage is not as easy to use as it seems at first sight. Often managers are confronted with the situation that they they are forced to “put the employee in the box” to meet the criteria of the bell curve, and this often also leads to a lot of frustration for the “postman” who delivers the message to the respective employee.

In our increasing complex world it has become evident that in most organizations people are not working isolated from other departments and rarely only for their direct manager. They collaborate with internal and/or external customers, peers, and other employees, and often in a matrix-oriented organization with many other employees who could contribute with valuable feedback to the overall contribution or performance of an individual. This doesn’t make the assessment of a “fair” assessment easier, does it?

With the emergence of new working models, hybrid organizations, and an increasing number of freelancers, our workforce in the future will look differently and will become even more complex than today.

According to the Future Laboratory, the number of freelancers in Europe grew between 2003 and 2014 by 45% (from 6.2m to 8.9m), making them the fastest-growing group in the EU labor market. Furthermore, one can expect that not only millennials will construct their lives in a very different way than yesterday’s workforce, who had more linear lifestyles. Steady career progression over a number of decades with one or two companies will be a distant memory of a largely unlamented past.

We can assume that employees will rather work on temporary (project) assignments than permanent roles. Hence feedback for appraisals should be collected from multiple resources, including not only direct managers and internal clients, but also peers, clients, and other relevant stakeholders. Feedback will no longer be something that you provide and receive during clearly defined times or cycles of the year (like Midyear and Yearend discussions), but the workforce will have multiple objectives within multiple (project) assignments from multiple managers.

To attract and develop the right people and cultivate a sustainable culture (if this is still what we are looking for) will remain challenging. It will require leaders and HR to not only find the right talent for the right company at the right moment, but also to find appropriate ways to assess the performance of those external workforce members in an accurate manner with data that matters.

Consider data that really matters to measure contribution

To become and remain agile in a rapidly changing environment will be of paramount importance. More importantly, to anticipate, respond, evolve, optimize, and capitalize in a digitalized world will be a competitive capability, and will significantly impact our success rate of attracting, retaining, and releasing the right people in a progressively competitive labor market. Their contribution (and not only performance) to the team, the department, and the whole company needs to be transparent, measured, and rewarded, similar to how we treat our internal workforce today.

Some companies have already started to measure real-time data from projects, meetings, or workshops. Although not always structured and challenging to link to concrete objectives, these data provide valuable insights for managers because feedback can be requested from almost all internal and external stakeholders, at any time of the year. In addition, the collection of this real time data offers a real alternative to the established performance appraisal processes which are, but not only, often limited by various biases, such as the popular hindsight bias.

All above aspects are by no means meant to be exhaustive and will require significant investments in change management and leadership trainings. Leadership capabilities must be built around topics like providing and receiving instant feedback. Reward & Recognition, combined with coaching, must become a daily activity of all members of a workforce and companies should think about pragmatic ways of collecting feedback from multiple resources. With this appraisal discussions, talent development, and collaboration would be seen in a different light, and Welch’s heritage would most likely be a chapter of the past.

Today’s post is all about asking questions. We’re not necessarily looking for answers or trying to generate solutions, but simply hoping to think aloud together. Our topic is one you’re all too familiar with: ‘Work.’

What does ‘work’ mean, literally speaking? Why do we call employment ‘work?’ What does the experience of ‘work’ mean to us, individually? And collectively as a workforce? How do we each conceptualize it?

Dr. John Budd of the Carlson School of Management has a fun, short video, summarizing his research findings on 10 meanings of work for employees. The range differs from a curse to freedom to a commodity to caring. Depending on the way we conceptualize it, our emotions and behaviors are shaped to cope with it.

It is a reality that ‘work’ traditionally means so many different things to so many different people.

And, of course, depending on that individual definition, managers are expected to adjust their approach to provide a safe, healthy, and sustainable work environment for their employees.

Then, there are questions related to how organizations think about ‘work:’

What’s their take on incorporating individual contributions? How do they organize ‘work?’ How do they promote it? How do they provide rewards?

In several of our earlier posts, we mentioned that terminology matters. Along those lines, here’s a thought: Why do we have a discipline called ‘compensation?’ What is it that we are compensating people for? It makes it sound as if we’re doing something against our will, but lucky us…someone is giving us a carrot for doing it anyways. It’s like we let our unconscious create the impression that we are not in control of the situation.

Many of these concepts we encounter in business have been historically driven by economists, during the industrial revolution and then later in academic studies. Over the years, we have learned and leveraged the best of them.

That said, our collective sense tells us we may be approaching the time when we can take back some of these terminologies.

‘Work’ no longer needs to be a cumbersome thing people do every day. It doesn’t need be a “daily grind.” We have enough knowledge to enjoy holistic and more sustainable systems in our everyday lives, not just the working part of it.

We may be able to work with other disciplines (i.e. neuroscience) and academicians to come up with healthier and more sustainable models to ‘work.’

Tell us what you think. What did ‘work’ mean to you in your younger days and how is it different today?

Wow!!! I cannot believe it’s the end of 2016! So much has happened this year – I don’t know where to even begin to summarize. Maybe I should just start from the beginning…

When I resigned from my corporate role back in late 2014, I had no idea what kind of journey was waiting ahead for me. I did not plan to start a consulting firm, for example, and I certainly did not expect to be in demand. Nor did I expect to be flying all over the world for project work, to meet amazing professionals. I had forgotten what it was like working with people you love and care for. I could not have dreamed of generating enough revenue to invest in an online platform, or to become an entrepreneur, or to be invited to conferences, etc. And I certainly could not have imagined all the publicity.

This year has been nothing but hard (albeit rewarding!) work… As the founder of two businesses, I had to learn how to best manage my internal resources (energy, hope, sleep, etc.) while being available for others at all times. That’s probably the hardest thing I had to learn and will continue to learn.

On the other side, I have been granted an amazing team to work with. They have been incredibly patient in trying out new things, as we discovered the path together. Between all the disagreements, disappointments, engagements, excitements, hugs, and cries, we have accomplished so much!!!

Since the launch of Whirling Chief in June of 2016, we now have over 500 subscribers, 10 active contributors, a Founding Advisory Board, multiple academic partners, multiple business partners, and many more who continues to follow us without subscription.

I don’t know what to say besides ‘THANK YOU!’ Whirling Chief would not have been a reality without my team’s hard work and our colleagues’, readers’, and friends’ amazing support.

We are extremely excited about the new face of our platform to come in 2017 and the new developments in progress. Our main goal in early 2017 is to land Whirling Chief on a sustainable business model. In other words, we want to very clearly define and communicate who we are, what we are trying to achieve, and how you, my dear reader, can be a big part it.

With that, our team is off to a three-week holiday. On behalf of myself and our team, I wish everyone a wonderful season of peace.

We hope 2017 brings all of humanity a generous touch of health, joy and unity.

Kindest Regards,

Sesil Pir (Founder, Whirling Chief)

We are about to close down our offices for the holiday season shortly. Here is a sneak peak of a new video series coming up – a byproduct of Whirling Chief and WhyNotPartnering. Take a look!

Last week, we had a new article published in one of UK’s largest HR/OD news portals, HR Zone: Who are you under your suit?

At Whirling Chief, we embrace certain leadership values when it comes to leading people practices and organizational effectiveness work.

One of our core beliefs is that organizational change (or any change for that matter) requires leaders to be able to engage and lead others from the heart. As a follow up, the ability to lead others, among other things, comes from a leader’s ability to better lead self. With this sequence in mind, in the mentioned article, our contributor Friederike Sommer and our Founder Sesil Pir discusses the importance of connecting and reconnecting to self. As we wrap up 2016 here shortly, we hope these tips come as an inspiration to all of us…

Please enjoy and do tell us how/if any of these ideas resonate with your experiences.

Thank you!

Recruitment and selection practices are crucial in building an organization’s internal labor pool, and are linked to success and competitive advantage.

In this video, we’ll try to summarize key elements of recruitment and selection activities. We hope in return you enjoy and share from your experiences!

Thank you for watching!

Being a manager is a difficult task. (I know, d’uh! But hear me out…) As a manager, you often need to manage yourself, your team, and your business all at the same time. You need to drive your self-development while trying to maximize your leadership impact. You need to work towards building a high performing team while sharing success. Finally, you need to demonstrate results while showing lasting value for shareholders.

Seriously, being a manager ain’t easy.

But the most difficult task of all? Probably managing the emotional side. As someone with people management responsibility, you not only have to understand and manage your own emotional intelligence, you also need to respond to others’ needs. Worst of all, you never really know how you’re doing. Well, at least until someone informs you otherwise.

In the old days, companies used tools like pulse surveys once every year or two to see how its employees were feeling – whether they were proud of the company, happy to be working with their group, satisfied with their managers, etc. In recent years, more companies have introduced peer feedback processes to better understand how its managers fared in motivating and engaging its employees. Today, with the digitalization of the workplace, we have a merging of ‘employee engagement’ tools. It probably comes as no surprise to hear many of them are available in the form of phone apps.☺ If you haven’t yet gotten your hands on one, I highly recommend you do.

In a couple of our client groups, we were asked to share this experience. I have to say none of them were without hiccups. One of the apps we used had the right poll choices, but we struggled to find a good rhythm to provide feedback. The other app not only had functional issues, but lacked the functionality to show aggregated results.

Nevertheless, it’s great to see technology making its way into people practices…

Having said that, the question remains: Can these engagement tools serve people managers and the broader organizational community well? We’re not sold just yet…

When we talk about the effectiveness of a service function, why is it that the conversation rarely touches on its project/program management capability? High-performing organizations demonstrate time and again that adhering to proven project and program management practices reduces risks, cuts costs, and improves success rates of projects and programs. This, in turn, improves the consumption experience of managers and employees. Yet we somehow continue to shy away from taking a portfolio management approach to our center of excellence activities.

In Human Resources, this reality is more permanent.

In consulting with several organizations across public and private sectors, we find out Human Resources functions often lack this portfolio management approach to their center of excellence practices. As a result, they often miss the opportunity to create a sustainable competitive advantage by embedding a project management mindset in their culture.

When a project and program management mindset is embedded into an organization’s DNA, performance improves and competitive advantage accelerates. In fact, according to the Project Management Institute’s “Pulse of the Profession®” study (2015), “The projects of high-performing organizations successfully meet goals two–and–a–half times more often, and these organizations waste 13 times less money than their low-performing counterparts.”

When a project and program management mindset is missing, any change introduced in the system – be it a new policy, standard, or practice – is experienced as a ‘throw-over-the-fence’ exercise to its audience(s).

To be more specific, imagine a multi-national company that has an HR department of 500 employees globally. Let’s assume there are only three centers of excellence in this company – staffing, performance management, and learning and development. Let’s also assume there are one new initiative and one improvement (to a current practice) coming out of each center every year. How many initiatives do we end up with? Technically, we have 3 new initiatives and 3 improvements, or a total of 6 activities to be consumed by the management community and for employees over the course of one year. Now, let’s imagine some of these activities are not aligned to strategy, not resourced properly, and not coordinated centrally? What kind of hell can a manager expect? Further, what are the implications for an employee?

See where we’re going with this?

It’s absolutely imperative for the HR function to hire a specialist (eg. rewards expert, staffing expert) with the sufficient project management skills and education to coordinate activities across multiple work streams and stakeholder groups. Further, it is critical for the HR function to have an implementation approach that’s in complete alignment with its business’ rhythm to provide additional value.

How to Improve Project/Program Management Capability in HR

If you are in a leading position within the HR function, consider the following:

• How are our service centers organized?
• How do we decide on which initiatives to invest in every year so we can be an active supporter of business strategy?
• How do we decide what resources to allocate to each initiative?
• Do we have the right project/program management capability within the function? If not, how do we build it?
• How do we involve our customers (namely, management and employee communities) in solution building?
• How we do ensure an integrated implementation so we are acting in support of business operations?

If you are in a client-facing role within the HR function and suffering from a lack of project/program management approach to the overall functions, consider the following:

• Do I have a clear understanding of the rhythm of business for my client group?
• How can I build a close partnership with centers of excellence to better coordinate activities?
• What can I do to involve, educate, and partner with my management community to ensure successful implementation?
• Can I help develop early education material for management and/or employee communities?
• How can I minimize disruption to business operations by supporting the implementation of new initiatives?
• How can I be pro-active in communication?

Remember, an organization’s ability to build and sustain its growth capacity depends on a number of critical factors. These include having active executive sponsors on projects, establishing a well-aligned and effective PMO, and using consistent and standardized project management practices throughout the organization. And, yes, at a functional level also!