Alex J. Muro writes:
> I would like feedback from any companys that have implemented peer-rating
> systems for front-line employees, particularly those in craft areas. What
> are the results? What can a company expect when it starts? How long
> before the employees start feeling comfortable with giving and receiving
> performance-improvement comments?
Peer review is a zero-sum game.
The "points" one player gives away, another player wins. There is a finite
number of "points" that can be won, and more than one player, which makes
it a zero-sum, (and, presumably, iterated,) game. The optimal strategy in
such affairs is to give away all your "points" as long as all other
players do the same and cooperate in the same fashion. As soon as any
player defects and does not give the same "points" to you that you gave to
the player, you defect, and give away no "points," in retaliation, a la
the Prisoner's Dilemma.
This probably accounts for why peer review does not work very well over an
extended period of time-ie., it is not a durable process, (except where
all the players are thinking-challenged, and can not figure out the
strategy,) and there is only one stable, final, solution to the
process-everyone playing a defection strategy. Unfortunately, that
solution is not amenable to a team environment.
Any time an iterated process has a single, negative, stable solution it is
called a "system problem."
Other than that, I don't see anything wrong with peer review.
John
BTW, I worked for a company that implemented peer review at the executive
level. The above scenario played itself out, as predicted. To begin with,
everyone gave everyone else "points," and nothing was accomplished, (in
the way of problem solutions,) since everyone wanted to be cooperative.
(It was a pleasant environment, though.) Then, the inevitable happened,
and someone made an insignificant defection, (which, IMHO, was justified,
in the specific case,) and in a landslide, everyone defected. (And, it
became a hyper-political environment-just as predicted.) That's what made
me start to consider peer review as a zero-sum game. Similar comments
could be made about the "budget process," for that matter. If you want to
make a political agenda that turns in on itself, and becomes the corporate
agenda, (assuming a life of its own,) set up zero-sum processes.
As a passing theoretical note, it is possible to set up a process for such
things that is not zero-sum, but it requires enormous intuitive skill and
capability, and the process can not be axiomatized. It can, also, be shown
that it is impossible to make a set of rules that can be used to implement
such a process, so it can not be generalized, or taught. (This is a
consequence of Godel and Turing-if we could do that, we could write a
computer program that would invent the next theorem of mathematics-and
they formally showed that this was impossible.) Also, there may be formal
issues regarding whether such a process would ever finish, or whether
there is any formal process by which priorities could be defined, (which
is doubtful, because of Arrow's so called Impossibility Theorem.) At least
if you expect the process to be self-consistent, (ie., not contradictory
within itself,) and/or complete, (ie., handle what it was designed to
handle.)
--John Conover, 631 Lamont Ct., Campbell, CA., 95008, USA. VOX 408.370.2688, FAX 408.379.9602 john@johncon.com
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