My Performance objectives aren’t the whole story!

For a lot of organisatons with traditional appraisal systems, we approach that time of the year: the annual review. That strange two-hour meeting that attempts to summarise the whole year as if we are at School being presented with an annual report! It's the meeting where some difficult conversations have been saved up until this point or where the odd surprise or two is revealed. It's also where we 'review my objectives' and award me a rating, either because its linked to pay or bonus or for what other reason I'm not sure! You're familiar with those objectives: they are often the subjective ones that say things like 'lead the project', 'take responsibility for...', 'continue to engage with stakeholders'!!!

But here's the thing: those objectives we are looking at were a few things we captured last year (that may now not even be relevant) or ones that I remembered to get down on the objectives template at other points of this year: but it certainly doesn't represent everything I have done or how well I have overall performed this year. You see, I had hundreds of objectives this year - some are on that template, some came out of conference calls and meetings, some are in a business plan, some were emailed to me and some were asked of me across a desk. They were not all neatly and conveniently on the appraisal objectives template for the purpose of the neatly-wrapped end of year review. And then there are the day-to-day routines that I continued to do well with this year as I always do - where are they taken into account when you give me my performance against objectives rating?

So do stop rating people against the objectives on that appraisal template -They probably represent about 17% of my performance this year!