20-70-10 Differentiation

Reading “Winning” by Jack Welch and his thoughts on differentiation-- the person who introduced this idea, and also implemented it globally.

One good point he made and that is clearly missed is before an organization goes this route, they need to have a robust performance appraisal system, that is free from bias.


Most of the companies have embraced this system without actually understanding the strengths and weaknesses in their HR processes. I don’t even think companies look back to see if they are gaining anything implementing it or not.

Personally small teams of less than 10-15 people can do away with this. Small teams cannot work if they have a less than average guy, and incase there is someone then it should not need waiting till the appraisal cycle.

I have been asked to just implement the normalization curve many a times without anybody wanting to explain me WHY,,,or even attempting to understand, why me and my team are better without it.. However not risking to be branded as a forever rebel i have also embraced this idea…

My suggestion is to benchmark salaries in the annual performance appraisal and move ahead…infact performance appraisal should happen in much shorter cycles..an then annual cycle should just be a salary correction exercise…

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