Performance and Productivity: Is Your Process Outdated?

Lewis G P - http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib//39/media-39385/large.jpgThis is photograph Q 28232 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24196900

It's not a secret that I'm pretty Type A. I'm a list maker. My lists sprout sublists like weeds. I like to do things in order. The strikeout feature makes my heart go pitter pat. I'm a planner, and I always have a Plan B, and sometimes a C or D. But, surprise, surprise, that's not the way everyone works.

These days-- in my world at least-- it is performance review season, the time of year when leaders try to knit together organizational mission with a job's essential functions and, most importantly, with the actual human assigned to make them a reality. That is, of course, where the rubber meets the road. Job descriptions are written for unicorns, folks who don't have bad days, baggage, health issues or workplace conflicts. Yet somehow, as leaders, when doing performance reviews, we need to figure out how all these paths intersect, while also bearing in mind that for the last 12 months or longer many staff have worked at home in their fuzzy slippers, interacting with colleagues infrequently except on a screen. It's a tall order.

Like many things in the museum workplace, performance reviews are a vestige from another time and another place. They percolated into the museum and nonprofit world from business. There, they were--and in many places still are-- boss-driven, and often used to negotiate raises or promotions, making it less about job performance per se then a given staff member's negotiating skills. Given our post-pandemic world, the idea of museum staff meeting with their director or team leader annually to negotiate a raise as if that were normal is a little laughable . But are leaders still evaluating performance every 12 months? Maybe it's time to re-think that model?

A number of big companies have moved away from annual one-on-one meetings with "the boss" in favor of team feedback from a selected group of colleagues. A team member identifies their group of feedback providers. They are approved by their leader, and over the course of a year, they offer feedback often as part of project postmortems. Comments are candid, face-to-face, and yet highly structured. Oh, and one more thing: all feedback is equally weighted. Yup, your leader, your co-worker, and your partner from another department all offer equal comments. So that's life in a gazillion dollar company like Google or Netflix. What about where you work?

The first question: Do you do performance evaluations or not? If not, why not? Not enough time? Or does it seem like you're in touch with your team so frequently you don't feel the need? If you do, is it a once-a-year meeting? And what's the goal? Is there a complicated alchemy that involves braiding museum mission, essential job functions and individual performance together? Or is it--God forbid--a brief session that opens with praise and ends with scolding? And how do you evaluate those with repetitive tasks? Unlike, say, Google--or at least the way I imagine work at Google--there's a lot about library, archives, and museum work that has a Cinderella-like quality. It's never done. You gather community advisors, and create a program. You implement, evaluate and then do it again. Ditto for collections where stuff arrives, it's processed, catalogued, conserved, stored, before the process repeats. The way people do these tasks is entirely individual, and yet the goals are collective.

If you're doing performance evaluations now or plan to do them in the future, here are some things to consider:

This remains a challenging time. Consider using the performance review process to touch base with the fundamentals like your organizational mission statement, your value statement, your departmental goals. Hopefully your discussion will help staff see themselves as an integral part of a larger whole, not someone about to be "gotcha-ed" after a year of fast pivoting.
Talk about individual goals. The last 12 months have tried us all. Work was disrupted. What new muscles has your team developed? Patience? Compassion? Empathy? Collaboration?
Talk about DEI. Was your organization part of the wave of museums, archives and galleries who wrote anti-racist statements post George Floyd? How did that play out in real life? Individually and museum-wide? Did it affect your staff or not? Why?
Recognize and grapple with your own biases--not just about race, and gender, although those are huge, but also about work style. If you are a list-maker like me, evaluating the performance of a last-minute, by-the-seat-of-the-pants high performer, can you set your own work style aside? It's not the model with everything else as "other." It's simply the easiest way for you to work, but clearly it's not the preferred style for everyone on your team.
Ask what are the top three things your team member would like to change in the coming year?
Say thank you.
If the entire job performance review process seems hinky and unwieldy, consider a re-evaluation for next year.

One last thought. No one likes the uncomfortable conversations around poor performance, but it is unfair and inequitable to fail to be transparent when work consistently goes wrong. Your staff feel as though they never get things right, which is punishing. People want to come to work, do a good job, and be recognized for doing a good job. It's hard to do that if the guard rails for "good" performance are mushy or keep changing. However you choose to do performance evaluations--as a team, as an individual--make sure the expectations are clear. Your staff will thank you.

Be well. Stay safe.

Joan Baldwin