Come Gather Round

The lively discussion about abolishing performance appraisal continues on several blogs (see links in the postscipt below). Reading the questions that are being raised — Why do we do it? Why don’t we stop? What is the alternative? — got me thinking about something I wrote in my first book, Artful Work: Awakening Joy, Meaning, and Commitment in the Workplace:

We are legitimately mystified, most of us — confused between what we really want and what will gain approval. In our culture, based on Newtonian science and supported by mystification, we typically gain the approval we desire by not being ourselves, by not being artful.

At work, to the extent that people are rewarded for being other than themselves, the company contributes to sustaining mystification and the wish for approval. This process precludes the possibility of artful work because artistry requires engagement of the self — the true self, not the mystified self.

Our management technology, emerging as it does from the very paradigm it proposes to change, instead feeds the need for approval by focusing on reward systems, management style, recognition, and appraisal. This amounts to asking, How can we get people to do what we want them to do? The answer is, Encourage the need for approval. The implication is that, left to their own devices and free from the need for approval, people will do something destructive to the organization.

In other words, the answers to the questions above — Why do we do it? Why don’t we stop? What is the alternative? — those answers inhabit rather deep and foreign waters (here there be monsters).

— Dick Richards

P.S. The discussion about abolishing performance appraisal is taking place at Management Craft, Slacker Manager, Talking Story, True Talk, Coyote Within, Johnnie Moore’s Weblog, 9 to 5 and Otherwise, and probably in places I haven’t yet visited.