Year-end Appraisal

I came to the conclusion years ago that performance appraisals don't matter at all when it comes to getting the juicy jobs and moving up the corporate ladder, and nothing I heard yesterday during my end of year appraisal interview has changed my mind about that.

Where it does matter is in determining what you are paid.

The comments I got from my own line manager, and even some of my direct reports, was universally positive. No-one had any specific words of criticism, not even constructive ones. I honestly wish they did - it would have explained why on a scale of 1-5, I scored 3 on almost everything.

In other words, I did my job - no more, no less. And this, despite comments like "... exceeded my expectations, despite a challenging assignment...".

What galls me the most is that to qualify for a managerial bonus, you need to score an overall 4 or 5, but only a small percentage of the managerial pool can be given such a rating. In other words, you are constantly being compared to your peers and whoever plays the game the best, gets the money.

The game?

I am referring to the performance measurement 'game'. It requires intimate knowledge of the measures used by the organisation to assess it's staff, and ensuring that you identify specific, measurable and achievable goals against which you can then be measured. Then it's up to you to exceed those targets.

Without prior experience of how the system works, I had few specific objectives, and hence had insufficient evidence of what I had done well.

Lesson learned.