Performance Evaluation Systems LO7836

Dr Ilfryn Price (101701.3454@compuserve.com)
Tue, 11 Jun 1996 16:24:51 -0400

Replying to LO7818 --

OK, Fred you said

>I'm interested. How do you identify the 'real' performance systems?>

For new readers this was in response to my suggestion that the Team Fred
was leading spent some energy on the informal performance systems.

The most practical route I know is encapulated in Peter Scott-Morgan's
book [Unwritten Rules of the game McGraw Hill 1994]. I can personally
vouch for many of the examples quoted and own up to being the client and
internal change agent mentioned on pages 61 and 62.

Peter is at... [Host's Note: Peter Scott-Morgan, Arthur D. Little, Inc.,
Cambridge, MA. The book is for sale in bookstores or you can try ADL's
marketing department. ADLITTLE.CAMBRIDGE@adlittle.com

And, for full disclosure... I'm an adjunct staff member of Innovation
Associates, an ADL company. ...Rick]

Having in the past disclaimed miracle recipes here on the list let me say
I am not pushing one here, merely offering one very practical way of
getting this stuff out into the open. There will always be emergent
unwritten rules in an organisation. You can help people who suffer the
consequences if you can change them.

We - my current partners and I - have since discovered that we can get
people to reveal many of the rules, and the factors that drive them, in a
workshop situation. I am not going to try and describe all the details in
one post but will respond to individual requests.

If you doubt the power of unwritten rules here are three questions

First consider a situation other than a company; perhaps a social club, or
the local traffic regulations or even a marriage or other relationship.
Reflect for a minute on the formal, espoused rules of acceptable behaviour
[e.g. the prevailing formal speed limit] then reflect on the Unwritten
Rules. Do they match?

Next consider what your company ideally requires of you, or what you
require of your workforce. If you, as a manager or as a managed, could
write the ten commandments that your company would wish to see used what
would they be? Using the actual format of the commandments can help. If
you had to write down the ten, or nine or eleven, for your company what
would you put? [Don't write your wish list, write the companies]

Now are these the actual commandments? Are these the rules that those you
see around you are playing by? Are these the rules your staff follow?
Really? How do you know? When did you last ask them and would they have
told you?

The last is important, for talking - and more importantly listening - to
people is the only way to bring out the unwritten rules. People know what
they are, even if they have not made the effort to make all the
connections between them. When the unwritten rules get talked about at all
it is in the informal conversations of the company, the corridor
encounters, the chats over lunch, or the gossip in the pub after work. To
reveal the rules those conversations must be brought out into the open. If
you are really serious there is no substitute for a series of interviews
in which you sympathetically and empathetically encourage a representative
group of individuals to talk about the reality of life in their particular
organisation. One amazing fact is how quickly a pattern of consistent
answers emerges. Another amazing fact is that an external consultant is
almost always essential. People in the pattern have trouble seeing it. A
third amazing fact is that most unwritten rule situations end up
manifesting one or more systems archetypes [I think in fact I have seen
every archetype I know in one situation or another]

The point however is not to just reveal the rules it is to change them. It
is not necessarily that difficult. Again I am happy to discuss specific
cases but this message is long enough for now. For people whose reaction
is to say "Yes we can do that another way", [which dare I say is a rule
for some of us] I reemphasise that it is the principle of the mismatch
between the intended and the real performance system I am describing, and
one approach to doing something about it. I am not trying to start, and do
not want, a "my tool is better than your tool" conversation.

Hope this answers the question and helps Fred. Mail me privately if you
have more specific questions [but not next week]

If Price
The Harrow Partnership
Pewley Fort Guildford UK
101701.3454@compuserve.com

-- 

Dr Ilfryn Price <101701.3454@compuserve.com>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>