{"id":438,"date":"2011-08-23T12:38:26","date_gmt":"2011-08-23T16:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/?p=438"},"modified":"2013-04-01T18:35:36","modified_gmt":"2013-04-01T22:35:36","slug":"autonomy-mastery-purpose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/?p=438","title":{"rendered":"Autonomy, Mastery, &#038; Purpose"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Steering-the-Elephant13.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-441\" title=\"An Elephant Rider\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Steering-the-Elephant13-150x150.png\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>Some years back I had a brief discussion with the Senior Vice President (SVP) of Human Relations for an oil exploration company about performance management.\u00a0 He was at a loss as to why so many of the employees at his company hated (his words) their performance appraisal system that the organization developed a few years previously.<\/p>\n<p>After a few questions, I learned the following about his approach to performance management:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>He wanted a level playing field for everyone<\/li>\n<li>He thought that his organization\u2019s 7 &#8211; point rating system was very fair<\/li>\n<li>He could not understand why so many people considered a rating of 4 an insult<\/li>\n<li>He believed that pay should be tied directly to performance<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>His organization consisted primarily of individuals with advanced degrees. \u00a0He pointed out that various people participated in developing the performance management system, and he was proud of the result. Why, then, was it not working? \u00a0He was talking to me because he wanted help from someone with an outside perspective.<\/p>\n<p>In a nutshell, I said:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>People do not like the process of appraisal, especially if it is directly tied to salary<\/li>\n<li>Conceptually, most people accept a multi-point system as long as they are at the top<\/li>\n<li>PhDs, CPAs, and lawyers are self motivated and trained to believe they are exceptional \u2013 anything below a 6 is an insult \u2013 and they are not too crazy about 6\u2019s either<\/li>\n<li>From their perspective, there is a difference between someone with a master\u2019s degree and a terminal degree. \u00a0The SVP had a Master\u2019s Degree.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The SVP was very resistant to this perspective.\u00a0 It did not make sense to him.\u00a0 He was trying to level the playing field. \u00a0He did not see the connection between school work and work performance ratings.\u00a0 Not everyone can be a 7, especially if the organization is tying pay and performance together while trying to manage budgets.<\/p>\n<p>Over the years I have come to realize that this discussion was as much about motivation and emotional commitment as it was about performance management.\u00a0 If I could do it over, I\u2019d make some changes in the delivery of my message, although the content would remain relatively the same.\u00a0 What I failed to recognize was the emotional ownership this SVP had in the system he developed and was responsible for implementing. \u00a0I would try to recognize his investment while attempting to separate the components of the system \u2013 performance, motivation, salary administration.\u00a0 I would talk about each separately and then how they work collectively.\u00a0 I would also talk about the definition of a level playing field, fear of judgment, self worth, the competitive spirit, and how people react to each.\u00a0 All of these have an effect on the success of a performance management system.<\/p>\n<p>This conversation took place before the internet and Youtube. \u00a0Today I would show him the following by <a title=\"About Dan Pink\" href=\"http:\/\/www.danpink.com\/about\">Dan Pink<\/a> called, &#8220;<a title=\"Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us\" href=\"http:\/\/comment.rsablogs.org.uk\/2010\/04\/08\/rsa-animate-drive\/\">Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us <\/a>&#8220;:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/u6XAPnuFjJc?rel=0\" height=\"290\" width=\"470\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Rather than focus on the educational degree issues, I would ask him how his system promotes Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. I\u2019d also ask what the downside is to the organization when it focuses on pay for performance in an imperfect system, especially with the realization that performance is one component of salary administration.<\/p>\n<p>Given the research, as long as organizations view a direct relationship between pay and performance as the <em><strong><a title=\"Necessary or essential\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Sine_qua_non\">sine qua non<\/a><\/strong><\/em> for performance management, there will be large numbers of dissatisfied, negatively motivated employees and frustrated SVPs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some years back I had a brief discussion with the Senior Vice President (SVP) of Human Relations for an oil exploration company about performance management.\u00a0 He was at a loss as to why so many of the employees at his company hated (his words) their performance appraisal system that the organization developed a few years [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-motivation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":457,"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions\/457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.steeringtheelephant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}