Managing in the Brainpower Age
The goal of creating a meritocracy seems admirable. But as Michael Sandel points out, it’s unobtainable, and working to get there creates a culture that is corrosive and divisive. We explore why merit is so hard to assign. Be careful with that Merit Badge.
Leading Smart Season 2 begins with the first of my conversations with leaders. This inaugural is on leadership in education. All about managing and leading teachers as they work to improve in their craft. This is a conversation with Matt Horvat.
In this third episode on firing, we ask a lot of questions. When is performance bad enough to cut your losses? When is a superstar worth having around? What is it about attitude that answers the question? Time to explore Trading Places.
The exploration into firing continues with a look at the low end. What is magical about the bottom ten percent? How does stack ranking cheat some people out of a good performance review? What exactly is poor performance? This is Bottom Feeder.
A song from 1944 sets the tone for good employee feedback. This episode features an upbeat cover from 1972, and far too many sandwich metaphors, yet still offers hope for great performance reviews.
First episode of two looking into the annual ritual of performance reviews. This episode focuses on the process, and why it doesn’t have to be painful. If you’re willing to do it all the time.
How a brutal performance review meeting ended with me getting a stapler hurled at my head. And how that lead to one of my most steadfast rules: in the workplace, no surprises.
How a simple question about failure of a single project lead to the most important research project of my life. And how that lead to the realization that everything about work has changed in the last few generations. We’ve entered the Brainpower Age. 
Recently, a good friend of mine told me the story of a sick performance review and reward system. I mean “sick” as ill, broken, maybe even sickening — not “sick” as the youth today refer to something really cool. The system bases rewards on the performance feedback from those around [...]
I just got forwarded an amazing thing: a perfect performance review. Actually, if you’re a manager or, especially a manager of managers, you’ve probably seen more than one of these in your career. The performance review with nothing but the highest possible scores, and not a word of anything that [...]
Microsoft just announced a number of changes in personnel policies designed to improve sagging morale. Good for them. It’s the result of a year of work by a longtime colleague of mine and now SVP of HR, Lisa Brummel. According to the reports, she spent a year listening to people [...]