SmartPulse — our weekly nonscientific reader poll in SmartBrief on Leadership — tracks feedback from more than 210,000 business leaders. We run the poll question each week in our e-newsletter.
How well did your end-of-year review process go last year?
- Very well — We did a great job of reviewing performance: 12%
- Well — We did OK, but it could have been better: 31%
- Not well — It was somewhat ineffective: 11%
- Poorly — It was a frustrating waste of time: 18%
- What end-of-year review? 28%
Are reviews dead? Only 43% of you had a positive experience with end of year reviews. Hopefully that means people are set up to succeed this year and they received actionable feedback. For the other 57%, ask yourselves why the process is broken. It is fixable if you focus on key changes you can make. Is it the process itself or the quality of reviews being written. If the former, remember you own the process and have a responsibility to fix it. If the latter, you get out of the process what you put into it. Invest the time. For the 28% without an end of year review, as long as feedback is given on a regular basis and people are continuing to grow, that’s fine. If there’s no feedback, you have an impending crisis you need to get in front of.
Mike Figliuolo is managing director of thoughtLEADERS, author of the upcoming book “The Elegant Pitch: Create a Compelling Recommendation, Build Broad Support, and Get it Approved” and “One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership.”