Acronym

OK Scott, I am with you on this one. And when you have sitdowns, they should always be 360 degree style, getting feedback from everyone.

Come on, Matt. 360s for performance review discussions? 360s are a (voluntary) developmental tool. They were never designed for performance evaluations where executives are expected to produce results, regardless on the impact on relationships.

360s seldom work for perfomance reviews where results are the basis for performance. A different tool is needed.

For what it's worth as anecdotal evidence, I've always found 360 degree evaluations to be very helpful to me as a manager. Maybe it's because I work in communications and therefore my team tends to do a lot of work with other departments, but the 360 degree evaluation has given me good information about my employees' performance (good, areas needing improvement, and areas where relationships needed improvement rather than my employee's performance).

Now, if I worked somewhere where 360 tools weren't used, I would do my best to get the same information in other ways. But if I had never worked somewhere with a 360 evaluation process, I might not realize how valuable it is to get that information. I think working in that process has strengthened me as a manager.

Thanks, Lisa. You validate the point with your experience that 360 is designed to be a development tool to improve communications and relationships for those persons who voluntarily want to do so. In these situations, 360 is a highly valuable tool. Many people report the good results you do, under the circumstances you describe.

In development situations where the involved individual(s) are involuntary and do not have a personal desire (or see the need) for improvement, however, 360s do not make much contribution. A recalcitrant employee cannot be forced to take 360 comments seriously, if they don't want to. And if the employee does not respect the view and comments obtained from the 360, the comments and process are ineffective.

When it comes to mandatory performance evaluations, the situation can be very different, particularly where the evaluation is based primarily on performance, ie results, as opposed to relationships, competencies or communications (which may be appropriate performance standards in some organizations), 360 may actually be counterproductive.

For example, lets assume a manager is responsible for some results that are necessary but unpopular with her/his direct reports or even other peers. One example is budget reallocation, from one existing favorite program to another, perhaps less favored program. Another example is staff reduction. The manager may successfully achieve the necessary results, but what might we assume a 360 will provide in the way of useful information as to performance--do we think the employees who are negatively affected will be happy and provide positive feedback?

Bottom line when it comes to performance planning and evaluation: understanding what the performance plan and evaluation are designed to achieve.

If it's to evaluate and help the individual improve performance--the necessary results to be achieved--there are tools to do so, generally involving metrics--targets and measures. If evaluation is to help improve employee development--relationships, competencies, communications--there are tools to do so--360 is one such tool, particularly for voluntary improvement efforts.

I think this may be where Scott, in assessing important organizational principles such as performance review, is missing an important point. All employees and prospective employees need to be on the same page, with clear understanding, of what really matters around here: results, relationships, competencies or communications. Pick the one that matters most, and be sure everyone clearly understands and is aligned with it. Don't think that eveyone will have a common understanding until or unless top leadershp makes it clear--again and again.

When it comes to performance planning and evaluation, not all tools fit all jobs. 360 is no silver bullet, and it may turn out surprisingly counterproductive if used incorrectly.

My take on 360-degrees, especially within the idealistic organization I've fantasized about throughout this series of posts, is that I like them. But here's how I would do them. If I'm a supervisor I would make it a regular practice to ask people to do their own 360-degree review of themselves.

Forget all the anonymous mumbo jumbo--remember, everybody who works at this organization is valued and motivated, and honesty is a cornerstone of the culture. So I'd tell one of my staff to seek 360-degree feedback with the specific intent of getting people to tell her how she could make (a) their job better or easier and (b) how they think she could make the organization stronger.

I'd ask the person to write up their results for me, letting me know if there's anything they plan to do differently.

I've kind of avoided a lot of the coaching craze, so maybe I'm wrong here, but that idea, in some form or another, is pretty standard executive coaching is it not?

But 360-degree as part of a formal review? Bah - formal reviews are a blight to be avoided.

Hey Virgil -- I think you make my point about leadership making focus clear again and again. That needs to happen no matter what. If anything, it's pretty much always been my experience that formalized review gets in the way of strategic focus.

I do bristle a little bit with the "metrics -- targets and measures" talk, though. That's easy in the for-profit world: What's the bottom line? Measuring mission, on the other hand, is subjective, and the traditional metrics used by associations--bottom line, butts in seats, sales, member numbers/retention--paint only part of the picture, and are woefully incomplete, in my opinion, of giving a good measure of the extent to which mission has been accomplished. (For all you English buffs out there, sorry for the massive run-on sentence. What can I say? It's a weakness of mine.)

Scott, accomplishing the non-profit mission is long-term, often aspirational and never ending, given the proper mission. Strategy, however, is very measurable and essential if an organization is truly performance oriented about its mission.

Non-profit associations generally have operations in two categories: 1) mission-oriented activities (many of these may not be revenue-producing and often are subsidized through their business operations and/or dues); 2) business operations activities(these are mission-oriented as well, but produce a net revenue margin, which goes to make the subsidized activities possible).

It is very possible and feasible for non-profits to develop quantifiable metrics--targets and measures--in both categories of operations that help assess the extent to which the organization is successfully achieving its strategy through annual operations.

Identification of the proper metrics is not always easy, and can be made more difficult by fuzzy thinking or lack of agreement about clear strategy, and how it will be linked to operations.

Suggesting, however, that for-profits can identify and use metrics, while non-profits cannot is a leadership cop-out, and undermines credibility in non-profit organizations, many of which are far better and more laudable examples of successful endeavor than for-profits. My run-on sentence can out-run yours!

Just my milage. Others may vary.

Virgil, on this one we just might have to "agree to disagree" as the cliche goes.

First off, I don't buy the notion of mission being aspirational. Here's the mission of your organization:

"To promote and enhance the technical competency and professional well-being of our members, and through quality programs and activities in mechanical engineering, better enable its practitioners to contribute to the well-being of humankind."

What's aspirational about that? That's pretty concrete stuff to work on, and I know you and your staff and volunteers are doing that every day. But how do you measure that?

For example, perhaps one could argue that you could measure "enhancing the technical competency... of members" by the number of new technical manuals sold. While I don't advocate ignoring that measure entirely, it's a second-hand measure at best. What if the manual is written so poorly that it's too hard to understand. It might be on a hot, hot topic and sell thousands and thousands of copies, but if no one can use it appropriately, that project is a failure. Or, what if a manual only sells a few copies and what was hoped to be a money winner for the organization turned into an embarrassing loser? But, out of one of those copies sold one of your engineer members corrected what would have been a design flaw and it potentially saved hundreds of lives.

What we need to be doing is measuring the impact we're having in our members lives. Now that's aspirational, I know, and sounds impossible. (How would you ever know that that one member used your manual to correct the design flaw?) But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be trying to take at least some baby steps in that direction.

Scott, ASME's mission is aspiration for the very reason that it will never be fully achieved or fully completed. There will always be more to do. It will never be over.

That's why missions are often very hard to measure, but strategy (designed to achieve the mission) isn't.

You need to think about this.

Apologies to Bush fans out there, but I'm not suggesting that a professional or trade association will ever be able to hang the old "mission accomplished" banner and close up shop knowing that it's been a job well done. But quibbling about what is aspirational I don't think is the point--my guess is we both agree that organizations are doing work that relates to and enhances their missions--and can and should continually try to improve how well they serve their missions.

But what I think is interesting is the differences we have about measurement. When you say that strategies can be measured, I assume you mean the things that associations always measure: annual meeting attendance, members, member retention, ad sales, exhibit space, etc.

I want to reiterate that I don't think these measurements are useless. But I don't think association leaders appreciate how limited they are. They can be used to measure the success of the strategy, but they do not tell you how well if at all that strategy contributes to the overall mission.

Somehow measuring participation--not just who attends, but who asks questions or relates their experiences--is a step closer, though even that measurement falls short.

We have had feedback from people using the reactive360.com system mainly from managers that they find the reviews very useful, the problem is communicating the data to the subject of the review so they actually dont think the review is a list of negatives, the review encapsulates all aspects...good and bad.