Employee Ranking Systems LO17677

Christian Giroux (Christian.Giroux@lmc.ericsson.se)
Tue, 7 Apr 1998 15:09:27 -0400

Replying to LO17661 --

Hmmmm,

Looks to me that this thread is becoming "hot" and emotionally charged
again.

Ben's point about competence and incompetence reminds me of a situation
here at Ericsson where Corporate came up with a Competence Development
model around a triangle. The sides are labeled "Business Competence",
"Technical Competence" and "Human Competence", with "Individual Abilities"
lying in the middle of the triangle. An earlier version of the model had
the individual abilities at the bottom. Ericsson defines these individual
abilities as the stuff you cannot teach people, or if you could, progress
would be very slow and expensive (those are my words). I remember the
first time this second model was presented in a Management Meeting. Under
individual abilities, there was Intellectual Abilities (along with a few
more...). The crowd this was presented to was in shock, like if the worst
of sins was just committed.

Well, my belief is that a company is well justified to decide that it's
not worth investing in the development of someone IF that person does not
have the abilities or the willingness to do so. There are a lot of
competent people out there that can be hired and become contributors to
the organization a lot faster and at a much lower cost.

The key issue is how to assess that lack of ability or lack of
willingness. Is the person in question the sole responsible for the
situation ? I've seen a lot of cases where people were moved from
department to department due to a performance that was deemed "below
average" - for whatever that means to find the right "niche" and reverse
the trend of bad performance review.

I'd like to go back to the post that started this competence/incompetence
offspring within this thread, in which Ben was saying (LO17611):

"Hence my belief that employee ranking is critical to the long-term
success of an organization. Whether management makes the distinction
between the competents and incompetents is not the point. I will make the
distinction on my own, based on my experience, and the experience of those
around me. If management asks me to cooperate with incompetent people I
will force them to decide who they value more: Me or the incompetents I am
asked to cooperate with. I will make employee ranking an inescapable
process, regardless of the discomfort or trepidation it may cause others."

Ben, I have trouble seeing how this justifies the ranking. I assume you
mean that if you come up with such an ultimatum, your boss (or his boss)
should look at the ranks and rule for you or the other guys (a possibility
you have to accept to remain logical). To me things aren't so black and
white. Who does the ranking ? How do you rank people across departments ?
What do you do with experience ? Do you factor in hope one might have in a
new promising employee ? (I can list dozens of other questions). Do you
only consider the last ranking or do you consider a longer history ?

What would you do if you were on the other side of the ultimatum, being a
manager presented with it ?

(and please can you read your own comments about coercion in LO15041).....

Simple answers and simple solutions are often the most dangerous
ones....Especially in a world of accelerated complexity....

Regards,

-- 

Christian Giroux, Manager, Operational Development - PU WIN Applications Ericsson Research Inc. Montrial

<christian.giroux@lmc.ericsson.se>

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