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Apparently workers do like to know whether they are performing well, and they want to know it more often then once a year, at a time of their “official” performance review.
ONE defining characteristic of the Net Generation is that it thrives on feedback. Just as they are used to checking their progress on leader boards when playing video games, so Net Geners want to keep close tabs on their performance at work, too. This can be a problem for managers who may be badgered weekly-even daily-for appraisal by eager young members of staff.
The Economist writer, who discovered this “startling” fact with a help of software company that have found the way to remedy this calamity, thinks that this desire to be managed well, is somehow a result of video games impact. The Rypple approach takes a load and responsibility of mentoring off the management shoulders and places into domain of crowdsourcing, at least so it seems from reading the article.
The desire of an individual contributors to know their contribution and impact on performance of a team is not a new phenomena. It is partially based on our need for security (as if it is known and documented that I perform well, my job is secure.) and partially on our desire for “meaning” (as what I do is more meaningful than producing a paycheck). The performance review, sponsored by the institution, is designed primarily for re-assessing compensation in relation to long term performance and career goals. In my personal experience, both as a reviewee and reviewer, these are not at all very satisfying or productive exercises which only highlight a problem with a lack of accountability of management.
On my journey I want to know the destination clearly, and want to check often whether I am deviating off my course. I am surely do not qualify as a member of “Net Gen” chronologically, but spiritually I am definitely with them.
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There is a very special place in a human psyche for a “silver bullet”. The ability to distill enormously complex situations into a relatively simple combinations of cause and effect pairs is very valuable talent for those of us who are inclined and paid to act. The ability to embrace and interpret complexity without drawing any specific conclusion is very valuable tool for those of us who are inclined and paid for to observe and document. Of course we all have to make choices and act, regardless of our inclinations or employment, however we are not equally qualified to do so and hence the probability of making “good” choices or act consistently with the choice we made, are associated with our personality “types” and rewarded accordingly.
Tom Davenport, of Harvard Business School, suggests in his blog Is This an Analytics-Driven Financial Crisis?, that over use of mathematical models for financial decision making caused this economic meltdown. Being a fan of Mr. Davenport’s work, it makes me a little timid to disagree with his assessment.
Banks and mortgage companies use analytics to make automated or semi-automated decisions about mortgage loans. Various industry experts have told me that many firms continued to make subprime loans even though a close analysis of the data would have suggested that chargeoff rates were climbing for such loans. The companies simply didn’t monitor their analytical models closely enough.
In fairness to Tom, he actually suggests only “at least partial” causality of “poor use of analytical approaches and techniques”. To me this suggests the lack of knowledge rather than complicity or outright dishonesty of practitioners. The analytics is only a tool and as we know “guns don’t kill people”, unless you suggest to outlaw analytics.
In my opinion the roots of the latest crisis are in divorce of “Authority” from “Accountability” which corrupts moral fabric of the market place and destroys public confidence in the ability and desire of decision makers to improve the situation. Since the executives, who made poor or dishonest decisions, are paid egregious compensations (I don’t even know if “compensation” is an appropriate term under the circumstances) despite their failure to perform their fiduciary obligations, and politicians are re-elected, despite their failure to protect public interest, we cannot claim that something was learned and therefore can have an expectation of the system to work going forward. Just like there is no religion without sin and no capitalism without failure, there is no forgiveness without repentance.
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I am 
a big fan of the Coen brothers comedy films and I’ve seen their latest installment of the genre, the name I borrowed for this post. Since I know even less about the business of cinematography than about the business of politics, I figure that I am uniquely qualified to draw some obvious parallels between the storyline of this movie and our current, politically induced, economic crisis. Essentially it is a story of a woman who has a burning desire for cosmetic surgery that she does not particularly need and definitely cannot afford. However through the carelessness of a caretaker (the law secretary who loses the info in the gym), unyielding power of entitlement and total disregard of personal responsibility as a citizen or a human being, she gets her surgery. Are you following me so far? The CIA gets involved, people get killed, good times! But at the end the the CIA chief, after authorizing the expense for the plastic surgery, asks a pivotal question - “So, what have we learned?” The answer is “Nothing. We didn’t know what it was all about in the first place”.
That brings me to our current economic situation - since nobody accepted responsibility for any single policy or action, which led to this crisis, I have to conclude that we have learned nothing except more distrust in people who try to scare us to do “something”.
You may ask why did I completely abandon the topic of this blog, which was focused (I hope) on economics and management of IT as a leverage for organizational transformation initiatives. Let me assure you that I have not done such a thing, I just decided to examine the current political situation in order to learn and understand better the challenges of transformation management.
Let’s define for the purpose of this discussion, that the role of management is to optimize available resources to achieve a specific goal. The specific goal could be an expansion of the organization, or survival of the organization during contraction cycles. Either one could trigger an organizational transformation initiative and its success would depend on the execution of IT and the adoption of change of people in the organization. It is very common to separate responsibility for these two parts or even totally disregard the latter part and that’s what causes most breakdowns in attempts to change the way organizations function. However it is also very common to blame technology and IT for the outcome. Therefore when the inevitable question “So, what have we learned?” is posed, the answer is not very conducive to future success.
We have to accept responsibility for our mistakes in order to learn from them.
Apparently workers do like to know whether they are performing well, and they want to know it more often then once a year, at a time of their “official” performance review. 
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There are many excellent blogs and other resources on the Internet which explore methodologies and Best Practices for business process re-engineering, project management, systems implementation, software engineering, and change management. However I could not find much help with unlocking value of integrated utilization of these disciplines to facilitate Organizational Transformation. In this blog I would like to focus on this subject. I would like to stress that this is not an academic inquiry, but a practitioner's desire to discuss and share practical business knowledge and Best Practices. Let's see how it evolves - "Every brilliant idea quickly degenerates into a lot of hard work" - Peter Drucker.