Chiming in on Performance Appraisals

I've been told and have read numerous accounts of prospective employers seeking out a candidates weblog to determine their personality, character and communication ability. I hope that never happens to me, but it could. This might be one of those posts that could get me into trouble but I feel the need to chime in.

I was reading a great post on Talking Story about abolishing the Annual Performance Review. There are many reasons I agree with this movement and hope more people push their companies to stop using them against their employees.

Depending on the type of work you do, performance may be easy to measure. If you work on an assembly line and you put together widgets, and your quota is 100 widgets a day, then you can measure how many you build in a day and measure performance. But what if your job performance is subjective? If you're a writer your deliverables may be the total number of stories, the total number of words, deadlines and so on. But in the end, is actual delivery the best way to measure performance? I say no, and here's why.

I believe quality goes hand in hand with performance. You can't just throw 100 widgets in the box and ship them. They need to be checked for completeness and meeting design criteria. Anything less is a failure of the product and the person building it. The same can be said for a writer. Just because I make a deadline or produce 5 stories with eight hundred to a thousnad words each a week doesn't mean they have any value to the reader. How do you measure those things?

I know I have strayed off the performance review thought, but it's all tied together. The one thing most companies miss with performance reviews is the coaching or mentoring that should come with them. If for instance you and an employee agree on a set of tasks that they will be measured against, you, as a manager, need to make sure they have all the tools and skills necessary to accomplish the tasks. Please don't use the lame excuse that "they should be motivated enough to learn the skills on their own." It won't happen. Why? Because most people need help reaching the next level. They don't want goals or tasks that are menial. They want something challenging. If you are letting your employees get away with menial tasks then that's your fault as well.

The reason I would say the annual performance review should be abolished is because it's counter productive. Whether you like it or not people need to be praised. They need slaps on the back in front of their peers. They need to know you appreciate their efforts. They also need to know in private when they aren't reaching their potential. Having charge over other brings a responsibility to improve their abilities, not just point out flaws. Work with them, help them be the best they can. If you can't, then managing people isn't your cup of tea and you should hand it off to someone else.

Please read this article and the other links that are on that page. Join the movement.

Filed in: job | management

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Thinking about writing a book

I've had this idea about writing a series of books. My Father actually put the seed in my head. His idea was very simplistic and made some sense, but of course I felt like I had no time for a new project.

My thoughts have been on what value could I offer in a book, and what would the topics be. My Fathers idea? "Write about what you know. You're a successful Father, raising children, working a job, running a business. You have a lot of experience and insight that could be shared." He's right I do. I have all of those things. But what value could they be to other "Fathers" or prospective "Fathers"?

A few days ago I was watching a television and noticed several shows had portrayed men in general, but focused on Fathers, that we weren't dependable, we were mean, couldn't love our children, and would most likely abandon our families for the "good life". The good life being a dead end job in a rat infested apartment on the wrong side of town and can't make child support payments.

There are far too many Fathers who go above and beyond for their families. Many who go un-noticed, un-thanked and completely selfless. This is the type of stories I want to write about. Positive male role models. I'm not talking about billionaire athletes or platinum musicians. I'm talking about real life every day hero's, Dad's, the ones who carry families on their backs, and do it with the love and gratitude every day. It's where they want to be and there is nothing more important than making sure his family has everything they need.

So hopefully I can get some ideas flowing. I hope to use my blog here to start. I could use comments, encouragement, stories, experiences. Share with me what makes you, the Dad, want to be a Dad.

Filed in: writing | father

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Follow up to rolling my own categories

I spent some time yesterday researching how others have implemented categories when using Blogger. Freshblog provided the best resources, for me anyway, on the subject. There were several choices and many other links to Blogger hacks.

So the scenario basically works like this. Because Blogger doesn't support categories, and I wanted to give my readers (um, the one guy who stops by every so often) a way to search for specific topics without having to read through all the archives. Setting out to find a solution brought me to Freshblog.

I first thought I could just add some categories as text at the bottom of each post then my site could be searched for key words. But, that was a lot of work. There were too many manual process that needed to take place. Still, even with the process I have now it takes a couple of manual steps to get categories but I like the outcome.

So today I thought, it would be nice to take the implementation of the blogger/del.icio.us hack and add it to wBloggar. Nice tool for publishing, and if I could add the categories feature in one process, it would be so much nicer. It should be pretty easy. All you would need is to add a couple of entries in the configuration for del.icio.us and a field on the entry form to add categories. Or better yet, just make them a drop down, queried from del.icio.us and your user name.

I might even consider building a tool just to try it out. Now I need to search for the Blogger API and give it a whirl.

Filed in: blogger | del.icio.us

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Rolling my own categories

Since blogger doesn't support Categories, I thought I would try something. At the end of each post I am going to attach a list of Categories. Maybe someone will find what I'm talking about with these little ditties.

Filed in: sitenews | blogger | weblog

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Moleskine and PDA, the perfect match

For months I have been experimenting with several organization systems such as GTD, HipsterPDA, Pocket PC and Outlook. I say experiment because that's what they are. I have liked a couple and have even gone so far as to create a Ductster (a HipsterPDA made out of duct tape.)

Today I ran across two different posts that I thought were worth mentioning. The first is at The Wanderings of a Wanton Wordsmith, a portable Post-It notebook. I am a pretty heavy user of post-it's. I like the ability to quickly take a note and then stick in my view. I even have a 3x5 card with a few post-it's in the file portion of my Moleskine. I also cam across this post at Rearden Metal.

I admit the one problem I have is the note taking portion. I want to take notes at work and not mix them with my personal notes. I guess what I need to do is get a separate Moleskine for my office. If I follow the process that Alastair Johnston came up with, using a Moleskine and a PDA to track all the information you need, I will be getting the best of both worlds. I think I will try that and see how it works. Off to Barnes and Noble to purchase a new Moleskine for my office.

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