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Dick Grote is Chairman and CEO of Grote Consulting Corporation in Dallas, Texas and the developer of the GroteApproach web-based performance management system. For more than 20 years he was adjunct professor of management at the University of Dallas Graduate School and for five years he was a commentator on life in the workplace for National Public Radio's Morning Edition program. Mr Grote was awarded a medal for his work in creating the National Security Agency's performance management system.
Dick Grote is the author of numerous articles and essays and is a regular speaker at human resource and general management conferences. His books Discipline Without Punishment and The Complete Guide to Performance Appraisal have recently been translated into Chinese and Arabic. His most recent book is Forced Ranking - Making Performance Management Work.
What are the main differences between standard performance appraisal and "forced ranking"?
Forced ranking is simply one technique in that whole area of talent management.
There are two questions that I believe every single person in any organization wants answered: first, what do you expect of me, and second, how am I doing at meeting your expectations? The first question would be answered at the beginning of the year when a manager should have a conversation with each member of staff to discuss what needs to be accomplished. The second question is typically answered through a conventional end-of-year performance appraisal system which sees the manager evaluate how the employee has done in meeting his or her goals and objectives. But that's only half of the picture. The other half is not about how well one person did in meeting his or her goals and objectives, it is about how good a job that person did compared with others. That's where the forced ranking comes in.
A key difference between conventional performance appraisal and forced ranking is that conventional performance appraisal uses an absolute comparison basis - how good a job George did against the objectives. One problem here is that if the manager's goals are set low enough and he or she tends to be lenient, then anyone can be evaluated as exceeding expectations. Forced ranking, on the other hand, is a relative comparison process. In this process we ask not...