I had to give a couple of performance reviews last week, and it had been a while since I had sat down and done one. In fact, the last time I did a review was prior to when I started using Twitter. As I sat down to give these associates my nuggets of wisdom, development opportunities and pat-on-the-backs, it hit me on how we could do this exercise so much quicker if we just limited the entire process to a Twitter-like 140 characters.
I believe I’ve uncovered the manager’s dream! 140 character Performance Review – 30 seconds and you’re out. What an increase to productivity, to clarity – I mean how could you not be clear and concise in 140 characters. I’ll even help get you started with some cut-and-paste 140 character performance reviews:
A-Player – Do more of what ur doing. Co. values you. Don’t lose balance. Keep leading ur peers. Get project over goal-line. What can I do for you?
B-Player – Solid performer, I appreciate ur effort. Focus more on results. Prioritize ur workload. Enjoy having u on the team. What can I do for you?
C- Player – I need to see immediate performance increase. Ur at risk of losing ur position. Action plan needed. What ru u going 2 do 2 turn around perf?
A-Player @risk of leaving – U Rock! Co relies on u – ur a big part of leadership future. What would make this pos. more satisfying? Anything bothering you I can change?
B-Player w/ career derailer – Solid performer. Short temper has potential to explode. How can I help u put out the fuse? Must change to advance ur career. Co. wants u 2.
C-Player w attendance issue – Get 2 work, stay @ work – immediate change needed or u lose job. (only 65 characters needed for this one – we don’t want to waste the extra 75 characters on a lost cause).
Now, I’m not naive enough to think this will satisfy every manager, and as always, you’ll still want to coach and mentor those difficult hiring managers on how to give a quality 140 character review. But with time and effort, I truly believe a solid 86% of your hiring managers will use most of the 140 characters in sharing with their staff the feedback they deserve, and you can increase that by writing pre-drafted 140 character review messages that they can just cut and paste to the review form.
Remember – don’t let the work of training your hiring managers on this new 140 character review process get in the way of you launching this new effort. Just think of how much higher your hiring managers will rate your department’s performance in delivering HR value to the organization. Don’t your employees deserve 140 characters?
We couldn’t agree more Tim!
Limited characters forces people to prioritize and to be clear and concise. No fluff, just direct actionable feedback.
Sorry for the plug… but that’s why we created http://www.rypple.com!
We’ve taken your core insight and built a useful solution for improving insight, productivity, and performance. Easy to create feedback that’s concise can be powerful and even fun!
Thanks for affirming that we’re on the right track!
If I get a performance review with any “u” “2″ “r” shorthand I will leave. Make the performance review 160 characters and write complete words, please. Leave the textspeak to illiterate teens and tweens, please.
Tim,
I like the idea that giving meaningful feedback can be done quickly and concisely. There are other possible benefits as well to using a Twitter-like approach, and your boilerplate tweets are very clever. But, I disagree with your claim that doing “the exercise so much quicker” will truly make for better performance reviews. If you have evidence supporting your take, please share it. I’m interested.
In my opinion, saying that a Tweet-length performance review is a “manager’s dream” is a revealing comment about your views on the topic. In my experience, a variety of problems are likely to pop up when employees perceive their supervisors’ attitudes toward performance reviews or feedback as being “30 seconds and I’m out.” Then again, maybe I’m misinterpreting what you wrote.
Michael
This would be great for everyone, employees forced to create a bunch of fluff and managers forced to create even more. Employees can get back to work instead of being forced to sit through a process most managers don’t like. This will not work for the manager that doesn’t want to recognize employee contributions because the organization spends time ranking and reranking to justify a particular department’s existence. There’s no way they can meet the ranking goal and keep reviews twitterlike.
Rypple is great. I use it all the time. It’s best used when employee initiate this on their own!
B.