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So how do we define a Sacred Squirrel? From our perspective, it's any practice, policy, eccentricity, pet project, obsolete procedure or function that has historically been widely recognized as protected by a person of influence and is therefore immune to criticism - even when most people admit this "Squirrel" is counter to logic, intelligence, productivity, rational business sense and progress.

One of the biggest, fattest squirrels in any organization is the performance review, so why not start here?  It's the mother of all that is sacred - in spite of the fact that most people hate them, find them a huge waste of time, and believe they demoralize far more often than they inspire.  Twenty years ago, a dear friend and colleague (Tana Suter) and I presented a program called Root Canals or Performance Reviews: Which Do Your Managers Prefer?  Root canals were the "tongue in cheek" winner!

Performance Review Time

In 1950, W. Edward Deming said, "Don't do annual performance reviews.  They just make people feel bad."  And Richard Karpinski said in a blog response, "Deming's point was that the stick induces fear and the carrot focuses on the reward instead of the job.  What we really want is engagement in the work, pride in doing a great job, and offering a service or product that will please our customers."  Sounds like many of the components of BoldWork to me!

When I conducted an internet search, I was stunned by the number of articles and blogs and vehement responses to blogs bemoaning the beleaguered performance review.  Headlines ranged from Eliminate Reviews to Why You're Doing Performance Reviews All Wrong.  In Esther Derby's July 12, 2010 blog, she references an NPR interview with UCLA business Professor Samuel Culbert who said, "Employee performance reviews should be eliminated.  Why?  First, they're dishonest and fraudulent. And second, they're just plain bad management." In Culbert's book, Get Rid of the Performance Review, he says, "This corporate sham is one of the most insidious, most damaging, and yet most ubiquitous of corporate activities. Everybody does it, and almost everyone who's evaluated hates it. It's a pretentious, bogus practice that produces absolutely nothing that any thinking executive should call a corporate plus.  How could something so obviously destructive, so universally despised, continue to plague our workplaces?"

If ever there were a worthy description of a Sacred Squirrel, this would be it.  Some might argue that performance reviews survive because we don't have anything better.  Others might say it's because they're HR and executive-driven, and both HR and executives are blind to the damage caused by reviews.

As a former HR professional, I've said for years that the only compelling reason to conduct performance reviews is that employees are guaranteed to have at least one focused, face-to-face conversation with their manager every year.  For the time and angst they cause, that's not a good enough reason - especially when they're done poorly.  If managers want to get quality performance from their employees, they need to build trusting relationships with them.  That's not a once-a-year process; it's a year-round endeavor. 

The bottom line is that while most of us enjoy positive feedback, it doesn't improve performance.  Human beings are internally driven to do the best we can.  Leaders who create a WorkClimate where roles and responsibilities are clear, standards for excellence are attainable, and personal accountability is high will have self-motivated team members who achieve outstanding results - and they won't need a performance review form to do it.

If we've hit a nerve with this column, please send us your response - or if you'd like to recommend another Sacred Squirrel that needs slaying, we're all ears.  Write to me at beckripley@doboldwork.com.