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I Love You, Liz Ryan
By Ron | February 13, 2010
Yes, I do. I am smitten. I don’t even know her, but I know that I love her. Did you see her list of “The 10 Management Practices to Axe?” How can you not love her? Well, maybe not, if you are the perpetrator of such practices. Here is her list for your review…
1. Forced ranking. 2. Front-loaded recruiting systems. 3. Overdone policy manuals. 4. Social media thought police. 5. Rules that force us to lie. 6. Theft of miles (airline). 7. Jack-booted layoffs. 8. 360 degree feedback programs. 9. Mandatory performance review bell curves. 10. Timekeeping courtesy of Henry Ford.
Let’s see; I have participated in forced-ranking programs, 360 degree programs and performance review bell curves. Yes, I have been guilty. In my defense, I was only carrying out orders (didn’t the Nazi’s use this excuse?). At the time, I knew that there was something demeaning and wrong about these programs. At the time, it seemed like these tactics were a reasonable way to counter the problems that we saw in traditional performance appraisal and pay schemes. Instead they compounded the problems with more bureaucracy and de-humanization techniques.
I remember sitting in a room forcing managers to rank their employees. I recall that they argued with each other who had the worst employee. Yechhh. I remember telling a manager (who I knew hired great people and developed them further) that he had to have so many of them in performance categories below average. Yechhh. If you want, I can drudge up many stories like these. I shudder at these memories.
Professionals like Liz and Frank Roche (over at KnowHR) are around to remind us not to keep foisting these programs on our organizations and our people. I love you guys.
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