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| Edited By: Birender Ahluwalia |Source: DNA webdesk |Updated: Sep 25, 2016, 05:11 PM IST
The ever-so-tense period of September marks the end of the first half of the financial year. For parents and school kids in India, it is the onset of mid-term examinations. We always looked at examinations or, for that matter any review, as a rather tedious, energy-sapping, and futile process.
We are so used to periodic unit tests, mid-term examinations and final examinations, it is convenient to have exams where we “prepare”, put in many hours of effort a few weeks or months before the exams, and then reach the examination hall “prepared” for the subject.
Our professional performance appraisals mirror the school examination process. We might call them monthly sales reviews, mid-year appraisals and annual appraisals.
Let’s explore the uncanny similarities of the two.
In unit tests, if you did well, the focus was on your rank and the mistakes you made. You were told you could have achieved a higher rank. If you did not do well, your parents are called in for an unpleasant chat. Then the parents have an exponential unpleasant chat with you.
Nothing changes. For the sales reviews, the usual mantra holds true. If you achieved your targets, your targets are increased. If you don’t meet your numbers for a few months, well, you are put on a “performance improvement plan” or a PIP. The PIP is a trailer that appears at the end of every TV episode revealing what to expect in the next week. The subsequent episode more often than not ends in a termination, which is usually fine with the employee. He finds a job at the next-door competitor with a 30% raise and a higher designation. The manager is left filling the target gap.
Let’s look at the annual appraisal process.
Always an unpleasant task. We go into process conditioned to “justify” our ratings. The feedback for an entire year — achievements, failures, strengths, weaknesses, technical skills, relationships, opportunities, development, projects, personal contribution, career path — everything is crammed into one hour. Pretty much like our final examinations. Whatever you learned in one year is tested in an examination lasting a couple of hours. If you pass, you get into a nice college or your career prospects are considered gloomy. Thank god, your parents don’t PIP you out of the house.
No wonder the process of giving and receiving feedback on our performance seems so tedious. You might wonder— why do we wait so long to receive and give feedback?
Just for an infinitesimal, utopian moment, imagine how we would have grown up if instead of unit tests and final examinations we had a test at the end of every single day on every single subject and then those marks were counted up? How would it be if the person who scored the highest was asked to teach his friends who did not score so well? Would that help build friendships? Would learning and tests become more interesting?
Now that parents, tuition teachers, and coaching classes could not help us “prepare”, would our parents have equipped us with different skills?
From seemingly futile memorising, we would have been trained on skills like-
— Valuing, actively seeking and working on feedback
— Enjoying the journey of falling and bouncing back from failure
— Constantly learning from teachers and mates, regardless of whether you hated them
— Directing effort to mindfully understanding rather than memorising by using strengths to understand subjects. Instead of thinking of Shakespeare’s Macbeth as a “ theoretical question”, we might be tempted to explore the contemporary nature of the plot.
Why should schools do this? Well, because that is what happens in real life.
When you join the army, you get instant feedback on your performance. Cricket, football and tennis coaches give instant feedback to their students, regardless of their celebrity status. When Dipa Karmakar landed the Produnova, a billion people found the wait for her score to be agonisingly unbearable. The Olympics would be a damp squib if the results were declared a month later. Even more, if the medals were presented behind closed doors. On a cricket pitch, the non-striker might walk up to the striker to offer instant feedback. The audience in the stadium provides instant feedback when a maiden over is bowled or a goal saved or an unethical foul. On film sets, the director gives specific feedback, till the perfect shot is canned. Amitabh Bachchan’s performance in Pink got instant feedback from audiences and box office returns. In advertising, the client gives feedback immediately. In great restaurants, the manager comes to your table as soon as the food is served to ask you if the order is right. If it is not, he can take corrective action. Uber asks its drivers for feedback on their customers immediately and everyone’s scorecards are updated in real time.
Feedback goes beyond improving productivity and meeting targets. I would put a stake in the ground to say that feedback adds meaning to life.
Let me take you through the Greek myth of Sisyphus, the King of Ephyra.
Many of us find ourselves engaged in the Sisyphean condition tasks of dragging boulders up the hill to watch them slide down. MIT researcher Dan Ariely and his colleagues, Emir Kamenica and DrazenPrelec, conducted experiments where participants were asked to conduct mundane activities, like matching ten instances of finding two consecutive alphabets. When they finished they would be given $ 0.50. Participants were placed in either of three groups. The first group was acknowledged, where the examiner would examine their work. Participants were asked to put their names on the paper. The second group was ignored, where they were not asked to put their names and the examiner would just file away their sheets of paper. The third group was shredded. When the participants handed in their work, their sheets of paper were immediately shredded.
However, they were paid the agreed money. The participants were then asked if they would do exactly the same activity for $ 0.05 less for every subsequent round. Note that all the three groups could have cheated, because the examiner was not checking the output and they were being paid regardless of the quality of their work.
The sneaky psychologists wanted to check at what price point the participants would refuse to participate anymore. What they found was that participants in the acknowledged group worked till $ 0.1485. The refused to do the work for anything lower than $0.1485. The participants in the shredded group stopped work at $ 0.2829. Surprisingly, the participants in the ignored condition stopped work at $ 0.2614.
What made the people work for lesser money in the acknowledged condition as compared to the ignored or shredded condition? It could not have been money because the amount was the same for everyone. It could not be meaningful work because it was very tedious, boring task. It was because they felt that their work was acknowledged. On the other hand, having your work ignored is as energy sapping as seeing your effort being destroyed in front of you. Even though all the participants could continue to make money or just cheat, they chose to simply stop work. The monetary incentive was just not enough.
We have spoken about exotic careers such as films and box offices, military, sports, and restaurants. Does it hold true in the corporate world?
You might argue that too much control might be seen as micro-managing. You might argue that very close supervision will undermine motivation but it is the context in which the monitoring is framed that influences motivation.
Let’s explore a real world example.
We have heard so much about the perks of working in Google. Given below are Google’s rules of engineering better managers published in The New York Times.
Rule number one refers to being a better coach and the two sub-statements are rather profound. “Provide specific constructive feedback, balancing the positive and the negative. Have regular one-on-ones presenting solutions to problems tailored to the employee’s strengths.” It talks about expressing interest in their employees and goes on to talk about knowing your employees outside of work.
Even in the pitfalls, the ones that stand out are “Not proactive – waits for employees to come to them” and “spend too little time communicating and managing”.
You can see most of it has to do with receiving and giving feedback and developing a healthy two-way communication.
Feedback has to be active: Whether good or bad, feedback must be given as soon as the event occurs. No, it will not be seen as micro-managing if you follow the next two rules. Take an everyday example. If your wife made you food, appreciate her taking the time to cook for you. Don’t do that in the evening, do it right then.
Feedback has to be specific: Observe the strengths and values that she applied. Recognise her concern for your health and effort in providing a nutritious meal. Recognise her effort in being creative to try a new recipe.
Feedback has to be seen as trustworthy: Do not fake feedback, positive or negative. People are smart enough to detect a fake. Attempts to provide fake positive feedback are as vain as attempts to cook up negative feedback. The person receiving the feedback has to see that you are taking a real interest in the development instead of just business and production outcomes.
Provide feedback with the adage— the problem is the problem, the person is not the problem.
If you are not being given feedback, seek it actively. Remember, the restaurant manager comes to your table. A great manager actively observes body language to see if something is amiss.
If you are being given vague feedback, ask for specific examples. If the feedback does not make sense, ask someone else to interpret the feedback for you.
The person giving you feedback has to feel you are trustworthy enough to not misuse the feedback or retaliate. If someone keeps giving you feedback and you don’t work on it, the trust will sooner or later erode.
To conclude, I want to quote from the paper mentioned earlier —
Changing the school examination system to instant feedback might sound utopian, for now. What you cannot deny is the inherent appeal of developing real life strengths, building values and finding meaning in work. Given the technological advancements and educationists like Khan Academy, the school system is not far away and cannot arrive fast enough.
High-performance industries function on F-AST feedback loops. The secret sauce of Google and Uber is not in the visible perquisites— anyone can provide free meals and massages. The reason traditional restaurants and bhojanalayas do well is because the owner sits right there, acknowledging their customers and seeking feedback and acting on it. It is in the F-AST loop.
The author is the Founder of The Positivity Company, where he helps business leaders become more positive and productive. Birender can be reached on birender.ahluwalia@gmail.com.
