This article was downloaded by: ["Queen's University Libraries, Kingston"] On: 04 May 2013, At: 06:51 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Human Resource Development International Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rhrd20 Performance: self as the principal evaluator Sheila Vaughan a a Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester Published online: 10 Dec 2010. To cite this article: Sheila Vaughan (2003): Performance: self as the principal evaluator, Human Resource Development International, 6:3, 371-385 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13678860210121347 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and- conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
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This article was downloaded by: ["Queen's University Libraries, Kingston"]On: 04 May 2013, At: 06:51Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Human Resource DevelopmentInternationalPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rhrd20
Performance: self as the principalevaluatorSheila Vaughan aa Institute for Development Policy and Management, University ofManchesterPublished online: 10 Dec 2010.
To cite this article: Sheila Vaughan (2003): Performance: self as the principal evaluator, HumanResource Development International, 6:3, 371-385
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13678860210121347
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representationthat the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of anyinstructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primarysources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Sheila VaughanInstitute for Development Policy and ManagementUniversity of Manchester
Abstract: The paper proposes an alternative way of looking at performance managementby placing the ‘performer’ in the leading role of evaluator. The proposition is rooted inthe evidence that, when performance is primarily evaluated by someone other than ‘self’,this robs individuals of a sense of responsibility for their own work performance andreduces the quality of both process and output. The paper suggests that learning is thepremier skill at the root of performance improvement. Further, a systems view of theorganization is essential if employees are to be given the freedom to self-evaluate.
I was at school in the 1950s when the eleven-plus examination was the passport intothe world of higher education. My friends had been promised all kinds of goodies ifthey passed, but my mother did not believe in rewards for what you were supposedto be doing anyway, so, unlike for my friends, there was no new bicycle for me at theend of the line. In the event I imagine that the actual quality of effort was not verydifferent on the part of each of us, yet now I wonder: had the promise of bicycles andrecord players been suddenly removed would this have affected my friends’motivation to get through?
When we get used to the ‘gold star’ routine, we pay less attention to the intrinsicquality of what we do and more to what the gold star provider values (Kohn 1993).There has been lots of evidence in recent times, especially in our schools anduniversities but also in the workplace, of the difficulties attached to relying primarilyon ‘external’ assessment and reward. I refer to some of this evidence in the nextsection.
In 1995 Heero Hacquebord gave an interesting paper at the Ohio Quality andProductivity Forum’s Ninth Annual Conference entitled ‘When 2+2 does not equal4’ (Hacquebord 1995). In the paper Hacquebord reminds us that man is not just abiological being responding to external stimuli. He rightly claimed that man is also a rational and spiritual being who uses his mind, his reason, his intellect, his emotionsand his soul as well as his brain and his brawn to survive.
Hacquebord claimed there are basically two models which govern our lives: theNewtonian, biological, deterministic one, where we look to teams, tools, targets,methods, extrinsic reward, and the rational, holistic one, where we look at theory, co-operation, innovation, learning and intrinsic motivation. It is not a new idea of
course. The first obviously dominates the thinking and work of Skinner (1974), Fayol(1949) and Taylor (1947) and other ‘behaviourists’. Fayol actually said: ‘From anability to command, the manager obtains the best possible performance.’ The secondapproach, based on an inherent need to seek satisfaction in our daily work, is morecommonly talked about with the work of McGregor (1957, 1960), Herzberg et al.(1959) and Maslow (1943). We call this approach ‘humanistic’. While the humanistsrecognize that man lives in both worlds, they claim that, if you want an employee toperform to his or her best, you do not set yourself up as primary judge of thatperformance.
When we decide to evaluate the performance of others or agree that ourperformance be evaluated by others, then we are behaving more in line with theNewtonian, deterministic side of our nature. This is because all we can use to judgeothers by is their behaviour; we can never judge their experience (Harri-Augstein andThomas 1991). Whereas behaviour is there for all the world to see, what goes onin a person’s head is not and yet it is this ‘experience’ which causes the externalbehaviour. If we pay attention only to behaviour we are missing out on the richnessof thought and learning activity which is internalized by the performer as theyperform. In other words it is no good just looking at whether or not someone (orsome group) ‘fails’; we need to understand why they have ‘failed’. And only theymight tell us. ‘Performance’, therefore, has to be seen as process as well as outcome.
And if our ‘performance’ is going to be judged primarily by the boss, the teacher,the trainer, the supervisor – i.e. as outcome rather than process – then all we learn iswhat ‘they’ value. We learn to do as we are told! The ‘judgement’ of others may besympathetically undertaken but the result is that it inhibits the real capacity ofindividuals to develop inherent performance evaluation skills.
I work with senior managers and human resource professionals undertakingvarious programmes in human resource studies, some of whom are clearly worriedabout the idea of generating their own criteria for good performance. They do notwant to do it and cannot understand why we should suggest it. They are on trainingprogrammes and have paid their money so why do we not do our job and ‘judge’them? Those who are willing to try self-evaluation soon realize how ‘rusty’ they are.It is all right knowing how well you have cleaned your shoes but how will youevaluate whether or not you have written a good assignment or effectively completeda group task? And yet the reasons we all perform badly or well lie ultimately withinourselves, our own thinking, our own models and constructs, beliefs and valuesystems (Kelly 1955; Harri-Augstein and Thomas 1991; Senge 1993; Bohm 1994).
So why do we not do our job and just get on with assessing them, those studentswho have suggested that is our responsibility? Because we believe, I suppose, thatimproving the process of learning is one of the reasons they are sitting there in thefirst place. And rather than have them infer what we value, we would prefer it if theyworked out what they valued and at the same time start to re-learn how to evaluatewhat they say, do and learn because, if they want to make a difference back at work,that is precisely what they need to start doing.
Moving on to the workplace, and building on Hacquebord’s thinking, it seemsthat there might be two rather different ‘models’ in operation and within each modela whole range of possible behaviours. The first sees the employee as a ‘provider’ tothe organization. (I have struggled to find an appropriate descriptor and keep
coming back to ‘provider’ as being the most comprehensive to cover my meaning.)Essentially this model is underpinned by the notion that employees are there to dothe work required of them by their employers. They are not there as partners in theenterprise; they are there to ‘provide for’ the needs of their bosses. The worstapplication of this thinking is that employees need not concern themselves withlearning on the job, as it will be made quite clear to them what they have to do andhow they should do it – ‘training’ will be provided. Any learning required will befirmly in the ‘other-organized’ (rather than self-organized) camp and task ratherthan process focused, externally rather than internally suggested and supplied. Therewill probably be external performance/quality standards to be reached and these willbe the only ‘acceptable’ standards around.
In my recent experience of visiting organizations with students, despite the fact that many are preferring to present themselves as ‘learning organizations’ in someway or other, it is my impression that the ‘old’ model still stands in the sense that,even if employees are invited to keep learning logs (who values them and for what?),do 360 degree appraisal and so on, the ultimate and primary assessor is usuallysomeone other than the employee themselves.
Related to this is the notion that people need and expect rewards if theorganization is to get the best performance out of them. Over the last decadeperformance-related pay (PRP) has become increasingly popular ‘because it promisesto firmly link effort and reward’ as Adrienne Margolis reminds us in a piece shewrote for the magazine for chartered management accountants (Margolis 2000).Organizations in both private and public sector embraced the notion (Richardson1999), thus perhaps robbing employees of taking real responsibility for goodperformance. In other words, the top ‘thinks’, the local ‘acts’.
In spite of this, workers continue to operate, as far as they are able, as rationaland spiritual beings. Richardson’s survey of PRP in the public sector indicates this.Seventy-eight per cent of staff in the Employment Service, 86 per cent in the InlandRevenue and 61 per cent in the NHS Trust claimed it had caused ‘jealousies’; similarfigures show the belief that ‘staff morale’ had been undermined. The general findingsof the survey were that PRP was neither popular nor did it lead to increased qualityof performance (Richardson 1999).
Walk around any organization and you will find pockets of activity which do notfit in with the prevailing, expected paradigm as ‘designed’ by managers. Good andbad relationships established with both internal and external customers are hiddenfrom the policy makers’ eyes so that they can neither maximize nor profit from themnor can they see in how much danger the organization might be. It is likely that thereare no ‘learning conversations’ going on in the organization to make public thisinformation (Harri-Augstein and Thomas 1991; Bohm 1994; Dixon 1998).
The second (and less prevalent) model sees employees as ‘contributors’. When wecontribute – to anything – we are usually in control of that contribution. We havepersonally decided to ‘make a difference’. When we join an organization we usuallycome with a desire to ‘contribute’ – hard work, effort, good will and so on. We are‘open to’ learning in the widest sense of the word. The models that line managers,bosses, colleagues have in their heads soon become clear, however, and most peoplefind the struggle to go against the grain too high a price to pay. A recent Gallup survey(Buckingham 2001) found that ‘the longer employees stay with you the less engaged
Vaughan: Performance: self as the principal evaluator
they become’. The organizers found this surprising, but when the prevailing mentalityis to see workers as ‘providers’ and the worker sees him or herself basically as a‘contributor’ some degree of ‘dis-engagement’ is almost inevitable.
Seeing the employee as a contributor means they are being recognized as a wholebeing, a rational, biological and spiritual being, someone who made a choice to takeup that job and has potential for changing the organization in ways we cannot initiallyimagine. By employing workers, an organization comes ‘to life’. Arie de Geus talksabout the ‘Living company’ (de Geus 1999) whereby workers select the organizationas much as the organization selects them. In fact, they are the organization, not justthe servants of an enterprise started by and belonging to other people. This meansproviding employees with opportunities for expressing learning needs, helping themto improve learning skill and encouraging and expecting them to employ methodologieswhereby they can measure and manage their own performance. What did Deming say? ‘Remove the barriers that rob hourly workers and people in management of theirright to pride in their workmanship’ (Deming 1986). Herzberg, some thirty yearsearlier, had appealed for a restructuring of work so that workers could achievesatisfaction ‘meaningfully related to the doing of the job’ (Herzberg et al. 1959). Thereis an implicit recognition here of valuable and valued contribution, the ‘value’ belongingnot just to the bosses but to workers also. We do well to remember that it is the ‘doingof the job’ that moves the organization forwards rather than the policies behind thatprocess.
When we look at the world of work and education today it seems that that firstmodel – the employee as ‘provider’ – dominates thinking. The continuing predomi-nance of human resource management training over systems management training(more on this later) appears to give weight to the assumption that people in theworkplace need ‘managing’. The issue of People Management – the keynote magazineof the British Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development – of 30 August 2001 contains an article making ‘official’ the premise that ‘good people managementpays’ (Caulkin 2001). This article, in my opinion, contains inherent contradictions.Although Caulkin references a number of studies linking ‘good people managementpractice’ with improved performance, the operational definitions of ‘people manage-ment’ are tenuous. For example, he refers, as examples of ‘people managementpractices’, to policies such as: ‘employment security, careful recruitment, narrow statusdifferentials . . . measurement mechanisms . . . teamwork’ among others. But surelythese are systems management activities? What are being ‘managed’ here, with whateverdegree of effectiveness, are processes. Furthermore, references to learning are confused.He speaks of the huge opportunities for ‘competitive improvement through learning,managing and developing people more effectively’. The syntactical difficulty withinthis sentence (you can ‘manage’ and ‘develop’ people but how do you ‘learn’ them?)indicates a sloppy interpretation of what learning really is and where it predominantlybelongs.
It is my opinion that the model of the employee as a simple ‘provider’ and nothingmore persists, first, because ‘controlling’ the performance of others avoids a lot oforganizational uncertainties, questions, learning through failure and the seeminglydelicate areas of trust and reliance and global responsibility for what and how thingsget done. It persists, secondly, I believe, because in organizations where ‘games areplayed’ and management decisions are less than openly made, workers too will play
games and may not behave ‘honestly’ or ‘reliably’. Management needs to see itself asresponsible primarily for improving organizational systems, thus enabling those whowork in the system to become supportively ‘self-managed’.
Where is the evidence?
Where is the evidence that ‘self’ as principal evaluator brings better performance results? If we can accept observation and experience as evidence, then becoming a flyon the wall of any ‘organization at work’ will tell you there is plenty. The evidence is not usually neatly or academically ‘packaged’. It remains in the behaviours ofperformers and, of course, it relates to how we measure performance. What does ‘good’performance really look like? My own public sector work experience tells me, withouta doubt, that for most workers in the system it means first and foremost satisfying thecustomer.
A company that consistently provides for customer satisfaction is usually one whichsurvives. Arie de Geus describes a survey conducted by Shell which aimed to investigatewhat the more long-standing companies had in common and came up with four keyfactors: sensitive to their environment; cohesive, with a strong sense of identity; tolerant;and conservative in financing. In further explanation of these factors, de Geus claimsthat, whereas a sense of ‘belonging’ to an organization and being able to identify withits achievements (i.e. the ‘cohesiveness’ factor) might lay itself open to being dismissedas a ‘soft’ feature, nevertheless the case histories showed that ‘strong employee linkswere essential for survival amid change’. Tolerance he describes as an avoidance of theexercise of central control, being tolerant of ‘activities in the margin: outliers,experiments and eccentricities within the boundaries of the cohesive firm, which keptstretching their understanding of possibilities’ (de Geus 1999).
The implications from De Geus’s findings point to an employee body which takesresponsibility for action, whose creativity is recognized and furthermore whose actionscontribute to the common good of the organization. This cannot be achieved if allaction is to be evaluated solely by others. Similarly a self-organized learner will recognizethe distinction between ‘evaluating one’s own learning’ and ‘depending upon othersfor evaluation of learning’ as being an essential feature of performance improvement(Harri-Augstein and Thomas 1991: 47).
Since extra layers of management were injected into the hospital trusts the UK healthservice has seen resignations/stress-related absence and worse – and so, similarly, hasthe education sector with its government-imposed watchdog activities, its OFSTED(the UK Office for Standards in Education) inspections and its research and teachingquality assessment exercises (RAEs and TQAEs). In continuation of the trends of thepast few years, August 2001 saw in England the proportion of grade ‘A’s at GeneralCertificate of Education Advanced levels (that is, the entry level for university study)rise by 0.8 per cent to 18.6 per cent (MacLeod 2001). At the same time, the level ofdissatisfaction and at times despair reported on the part of teachers was unprecedented.Mike Tomlinson, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools reported recently on teachershortages that ‘the situation is worse then he can ever remember’ (Tomlinson 2001).If the British government really does want a learning society, as it claims, it is notbehaving in a rational way. The government’s latest scheme of requiring university staff
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to report how they spend their time is another example. ‘A public service,’ says RichardSennett, ‘works well when professionals in it get respect for their work; under theseconditions they will hold each other to account. That’s how the health services used tooperate, and it made medical care in Britain the envy of other countries.’ The underlyingassumption is, says Sennett, that ‘left to ourselves, we won’t keep our own houses inorder’ (Sennett 2000).
An article in the Guardian (Major 2000) highlighted the lies and mis-reportingwhich some university departments felt obliged to descend to in order to achievetheir desired ratings for the up and coming RAE. Rather than concentrating onimproving the intrinsic quality of the ideas in their work, as judged by themselves,their colleagues and their students, academic staff have started to spend their researchlives counting up points, scratching backs and trying to identify which are the ‘top’journals. Not only has the system led to widespread stress and disillusionment(Heather Höpfl (2000) remarks that in the present climate ‘generating income ismore important than generating ideas’); it has also led to a marginalization of themajor reason universities exist, i.e. to support people’s learning.
However, alternative approaches have been and continue to be carried out withsuccess. In 1985 the Royal Mail instigated a self-organized learning project at threemajor sites and then extended the approach across the organization over a seven-year period. Its aim was ultimately to improve operational performance. Two senioroperational managers, reporting directly to the then board member for Royal MailOperations became ‘internal consultants’ and, working to his terms of reference‘To spearhead a programme of action significantly to improve the effectiveness offront-line managers’, recruited two specialists in the improvement of learningcapability. These specialists (who preferred the term ‘learning practitioners’) wereLaurie Thomas and Sheila Harri-Augstein from what was then the Centre for theStudy of Human Learning at Brunel University.
The whole focus was on the workplace as a learning environment and the front-line managers as learners. Self-evaluation was implicit and was reviewedsystematically through learning conversations with learning coaches, ultimatelybecoming internalized in the learner as skill developed. Even though moretraditional performance appraisal systems continued to run there was no doubt thatself was acknowledged as the principal evaluator of performance with theintroduction of a system of self-assessment as ‘feedback for learning’. Theperformance indicators included both subjectively assessed and objectively measuredimprovements.
In one office productivity was raised by 24 per cent over eighteen months; qualityof service increased by between 2 and 5 per cent and costs per standard hour reducedover the same period by 19 per cent (Harri-Augstein and Thomas 1991). Here isjust one manager’s comment from among many supportive of the system: ‘Myintention was to improve the work area performance over the 3 shift system (24hours); the afternoon shift lay 12.5 per cent below target but with the work we havedone it is now 33 per cent above the target . . . the afternoon shift savings alone arein the order of £5K per annum and there is more to get from the morning and nightshifts’ (Smith in Lane 2000).
I understand the Royal Mail no longer uses the approach. Wide-scale reorganizationsstarting in 1993 meant that some new senior managers took over from those directly
involved in supporting the project. It appears that these new managers may have eitherbeen in ignorance of, or did not value, the approach, perhaps not convinced that it wasthis which had led to the improvements, and, fresh from in-house managementeducation programmes – some from business schools, they had not been encouragedto even think about let alone welcome self-organization. Pockets of self-organizedlearning activity continued, but it did not succeed in becoming a business-wide strategy.A recent edition of the Royal Mail’s newsletter The Courier states: ‘Millions of poundsof revenue will be lost if our handling of inward international mail does not improve.. . . The business is under-performing in this area. . . . If the set target is missed it willcost the business at least £6.5 million’ (Courier May 2001). In the same edition, the‘[k]ey to driving up performances’ is described as ‘working together’, with the riderthat the business is currently failing on all key targets.
But can we suggest that ‘working together’ may be altogether too vague an intentionfor such a large organization with so much at stake? Unless that phrase is purposivelydefined and related strategies and outcomes clearly stated there is risk of nothinghappening at all. A systemic view of learning and change must surely take on board an understanding of the science and discipline of systems and learning. Especially in performance terms, the nature of variation dictates that ‘targets’ anyway become farless important than a concentration on process improvement. It is ironic that, withaccusations of the loss of one million letters a week and a series of wildcat strikes overrecent times (Vasager 2000; Brown 2000), the environment which has been createdappears to be now the extreme opposite to the one in which employees as suppliers andas learners together with customers become the drivers of measurable improvedperformance.
Action learning (see Revans 1980) is another approach implicitly fostering theconcept of self as the principal evaluator of performance. An article in PeopleManagement (O’Hara et al. 2001), describes how it has been used to promote ‘a cultureof continuous development’ at Ireland’s North Western Health Board. The board,providing health and social services for three counties, wanted to recruit and retainskilled people in a tight labour market. ‘What was needed,’ say the authors, ‘was asignificant, strategic organisational development intervention that could eventually beself-sustaining, rather than perpetually reliant on external facilitation.’ Thus, self-managed action learning sets were established. One consultant was so impressed withthe approach he introduced a hospital-wide system, which invited each specialism tocarry out a clinical audit of its own specific services.
In a totally different environment, a control-group field experiment with insurancesalespeople in North America showed that encouraging them to take control of theirown performance and helping them through a training/learning intervention in self-assessment, self-monitoring, self-evaluation, to improve their capability at this, led to direct performance improvements as measured in both a subjective and an objectiveway, including the number of calls made and amount of revenue generated (Frayne andGeringer 2000).
Vaughan: Performance: self as the principal evaluator
An investigation of the literature indicates the numerous ways in which ‘self-assessment’is interpreted. My concern is primarily with individual and group continuous monitoringand improvement of performance. So, while I am not denigrating other approaches,‘fixed-in-time’ team self-evaluations such as those described by Rees (1999), Small(2001) and, at an organizational level, by Ritchie and Dale (2000) are not what I meanwhen I promote the importance of self as the principal evaluator of performance.
Learning as the premier skill
From the cases described at the end of the second part of this paper, it becomes obviousthat performance improvement can come about only when people learn to do better– not just become better at the task but become better at the processes underlying theperformance of the task: reflection, analysis, synthesis, reconstruction, planning. Andso it becomes undesirable to separate the two strands of task-related and learning-related activity.
As children we seem to be experts at testing, reflection and testing again. Interferingwith that process rather than enabling it may result in compliance but not allow for theadoption of responsibility. ‘We have come to believe’, says Kohn, ‘that a responsiblestudent is one who unthinkingly complies with an adult’s demand’ and that, if we wantstudents to ‘act responsibly’, then we must ‘give them responsibilities’ (Kohn 1998),ignoring the fact that as children we are eager to take on such responsibilities forpersonal growth.
Much has been written on the psychological process of learning (Kolb et al. (1971),Rogers (1983) and Knowles (1990) are useful references) and on the social constructof learning in organizations, some of it extremely valuable and useful (Senge 1993;Argyris and Schon 1996). Little has been written, however, on how to actually improveat the learning process despite the continuing interest of educational psychologists overthe last half century. This body of enquiry has largely concerned itself with study skillsand instructional technology, a modern manifestation being ‘e-learning’. ClaireWeinstein is one of the most recent to look at learning strategies and it is to her creditthat she recognizes the importance not only of task knowledge and content knowledgebut also of self knowledge and strategy knowledge. An analysis of useful learningstrategies, including pre-, during and post-task approaches, is offered in her recentpublication on study strategies and lifelong learning (Weinstein and Hume 1998). Ata meta-level however, we can say that, though greatly welcomed, the whole work is still‘task-focused’ in the sense of its continuing reference to the educational environmentand to the task of ‘studying’. Zimmerman et al. (1996) takes a similar approach.Although reminding us that ‘we must constantly self-evaluate our effectiveness aslearners to optimally refine our strategic approaches’, he goes on to say that this isbecause we might need them later ‘especially when the academic going gets tough’.
The Deming/Shewart ‘Plan, Do, Study, Act’ cycle for learning and improvementin the workplace (Deming 1994: 131 ff.) provides a useful overview of how the learningprocess might be operationalized, but it is insufficiently detailed to be pertinentlyhelpful. Sheila Harri-Augstein and Laurie Thomas (1991), on the other hand, provideguidance as to how we might plan, do (try out), study (review) and act. Identifying
purposes, strategies, outcomes and review at each of the PDSA ‘nodes’ enables a levelof precision which cannot fail but carry us forward (Smith 1999).
Harri-Augstein and Thomas’s self-organized learning approach offers an under-standing of learning as a whole system which is both task focused and learning focusedand enables the development of learning skill – in any situation and for any individualand group (Thomas and Harri-Augstein 1985; Harri-Augstein and Thomas 1991;Harri-Augstein and Webb 1995).
A skilled self-organized learner cannot fail to manage their own performance. As Harri-Augstein and Thomas point out, ‘the feedback loops which control immediateperformance are dynamic. . . . Skill results from being able to attribute meaning toevents in ways that enable one to recognise when to do what . . . and allow one torecognise continually when one has successfully achieved one’s immediate objectives’(1991: 74–5).
There must be some supportive structure to enable this to happen, but, comparedto what is spent on the typical training budget, the cost will be minimal and reducesover time as support becomes internalized. Without internalization learners will almostcertainly have difficulty understanding why things still go wrong and how to put themright. Such learners need to engage more fully in the ‘learning to learn’ dialogue. Howam I learning to learn to do that and how can I do better? (learning focus). How do Iknow how well I am doing this as I do it? (task focus). This is the level of understandingwe need in our performance self-evaluators and we have to expect to provide supportto enable that to happen.
Evaluation is integral to this process. A good evaluator is likely to be a good learnerand a skilled learner will always be an effective evaluator. ‘Evaluation . . . is a continuousprocess and is embedded in the model of continuous self-organised learning. Theconcepts of continuous learning and continuous improvement radically re-shape thewhole idea of evaluation’ (Wille and Smith 1993).
Unfortunately, personnel departments and line managers appear, in general, tobelieve that it is their job to evaluate individual performance and, in ‘appraising’performance, often leave the opinions of the employee out altogether or treat them lessthan seriously. An Industrial Society survey in 1998 of 480 human resource andpersonnel specialists found that ‘[i]nvolvement of employee representatives in the designof performance management systems is uncommon, at 30 per cent’. In the majority oforganizations surveyed, it was ‘objectives’ and ‘targets’ which were used to measureperformance (88 per cent and 61 per cent respectively). This happened throughperformance reviews and appraisals by line managers. Only 25 per cent of organizationsperceived a link with customer service (Industrial Society 1998). Targets and objectivesmay be all well and good, but how often do they take on board ‘process’, in particularthe continuing process of learning?
To what extent do managers fear that rampant individualism may emerge if they allow responsibility for performance to be ‘delegated’? Many claim there wouldbe deliberate ‘not owning up to’ poor performance. And this would appear to justifythe premise that you cannot rely on people to evaluate their own performance truthfully,especially if promotion hangs on it. I believe you can respond to that criticism only bysaying this is much more likely to happen in organizations where there is a) secrecy anda heavy ‘élite in control’ mentality and/or b) a competitive atmosphere such as thatoften fostered by performance-related pay. When staff are invited to compete for scarce
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rewards, then the temptation to ‘fudge’ the truth will be overwhelming. And, untilthese root issues are addressed, then it is true that self-evaluation becomes notimpossible but definitely more problematic.
Similarly there are those who claim that some workers would not know what to do with self-evaluation if you handed it to them on a plate. Chris Argyris explores thisidea in his article ‘Empowerment: the emperor’s new clothes’ (1998). ‘Managers loveempowerment in theory,’ he says ‘but the command-and-control model is what theytrust and know best.’ This is most often not a natural and instinctive response, it is alearned response. The longer an employee lives and works in an environment wherehe/she has been robbed of any responsibility for personal action, the more they willbecome disabled in this connection. It is usually fear and unnatural dependency thatinhibit rather than laziness or incapacity. In fact, Fred Nickols counteracted Argyris ina follow-up article by saying ‘CEOs don’t get it. Argyris doesn’t get it. Employees arealready self-governing; each and every one of them is 100 per cent in control of his orher behavior’ (Nickols 1998). It seems to me that both Argyris and Nickols may be rightexcept that Nickols’ ‘self-government’ is not explained in terms of the necessary qualityof that process and this is surely where the crux of the matter lies.
A systems approach
What is the link between systems thinking and the notion of self as the principalevaluator? I should like to suggest that the longer an explicit policy of self-evaluationof performance in the workplace is not permitted, the more likely the workforce will beto demonstrate behaviour which may indicate indifference, frustration and ultimatelyapathy, all of which will keep workers ‘inactive’ until given instructions as to what todo next. On the other hand, inviting self-evaluation may also invite disruption if thesystem if not properly managed.
It is important here to make a distinction between ‘systematic’ and ‘systemic’approaches. Frederick Taylor based his thinking on a ‘systematic’ view of people inorganizations: predictable rather than exploratory, output rather than process oriented,logically rather than creatively driven. Peter Checkland, on the other hand, sees‘systemicity’ as a ‘process of inquiry into the world’ and an organization as ‘sense makingby a group of people engaged in dialogue’ (Checkland and Holwell 1998).
More pertinently, both Senge and Ackoff go on to say something even moreimportant about systems: that an ‘empowered’ workforce may well increase conflict(Ackoff 1999) and organizational stress (Senge 1990) unless you develop a social-systemic model (Ackoff) and have alignment of shared vision and mental models ‘aboutthe business reality in which they operate’ (Senge 1990). Otherwise, management willstruggle to maintain coherence and direction and a different level of frustration may beexperienced by ‘empowered’ employees.
Ackoff (1999) uses the analogy of the impossibility of making a super-car fromdirectly putting together the engine of a Rolls Royce, the transmission system of aMercedes and the braking system of a Buick. Having pockets of individuals workingaway at effectively evaluating their own performance and significantly improving thatperformance may not have much global impact if their internal customers and suppliersdo not care, do not know and do not share the same values. Alternatively, Goldratt’sTheory of Constraints likens organizations to a network of chains. A weak link (a system’s
constraint) will limit the performance of the whole network and, even if you have verystrong links, they cannot offset the damage done by the weak ones. This mainly affectswhat Goldratt calls ‘throughput’ or performance (Dettmer 1998).
There are heavy demands on today’s workers in terms of the need continuously toacquire new skills. A search on the electronic management database ‘ABI Inform’resulted in a plethora of articles on the topic of the new skills currently needed bytoday’s workforce (ABI Inform 2001). What was obvious from scanning through thoseresults, however, was that articles looking at the ability to learn quickly and effectivelywere far fewer than those detailing ‘these are the skills current managers (etc.) need’.The focus is on ‘what’ rather than ‘how’.
Learning is as implicit to systems thinking as systems thinking is implicit in learning.Indeed, learning may be described as a system in itself, seen not as a vague, unformed,elusive concept but as a rigorous and scientific one. Mapping, measuring and controllingshould be the business of every employee, not just managers. Deming, the quality andsystems practitioner and writer, says little directly about self-evaluation or about learningbut his thinking on systems implies the importance of both. In the New Economics hesays, ‘On the job, anyone has an obligation to try to improve the system, and thusimprove his own performance and everyone else’s’ (Deming 1994). It was Demingand Shewart who promoted the importance of understanding variation at work. Anymanager promoting the idea of self-evaluation needs to understand and use variationas a natural concomitant of organizational performance. Control charts help bothemployees to measure performance and managers to see whether things as a whole aregoing in the right direction. Good performance is surely about the quality of control.Concentrating just on the control of quality (as most organizations do if they are at allconcerned) implies an external assessor rather than an internal process of assessment(Smith 1999). As Deming says in Out of the Crisis (1986), ‘Every company has a qualitycontrol department. Unfortunately, quality control departments have taken the job ofquality away from the people that can contribute most to quality – management,supervisors, managers of purchasing, and production workers’. If we really want the‘control’ process (i.e. the evaluation process) to be one of quality we need to ensurethat ‘performers’ are not just allowed and invited but also equipped and enabled to carryout that control process as it relates to their own performance and contributes, as itinevitably will, to the system’s significant improvement. They cannot do this withoutlearning to become better learners.
It is not the intention behind this paper to offer prescription or even act as a guideto action. Rather it is to encourage readers to reflect upon their own experience of theissues I have raised and maybe to consult with some of the major texts below, inparticular, the works of Russell Ackoff, Laurie Thomas and Sheila Harri-Augstein, W. Edwards Deming and Alfie Kohn. These are not new voices. They have been arounda long time, working and thinking in the systems and learning areas. Each in differentways shows us alternative approaches to maximizing our own learning and performancepotential and that of our enterprises. It is better to move a little way than not to moveat all, but if you want lasting and significant change you must be prepared to take lastingand significant action.
Vaughan: Performance: self as the principal evaluator
There continues to be widespread disillusion with targets and testing in UK schoolsamongst teachers, pupils and parents. The National Association of Head Teachers havenow called for a boycott and an end to the system (Woodward 2003; O’Farrell 2003).In the universities we have seen similar increasing disillusion with the ResearchAssessment Exercise (RAE). Despite the government’s recent proposal to create aresearch “superleague” there is a strong consensus of opinion that it’s the “fundamentalsthat are wrong” (Thomas 2003) and there are constant calls for its review. Royal Mailcontinues to shed staff and lose serious money despite the fact that Alan Leighton, whohas taken over as chairman since this article was written, appears to be making someinteresting and innovative decisions. Work Time Listening and Learning is beingencouraged and a £1m leadership coaching programme has begun (Wigham 2002).However, comparing this with the self financing Self Organised Learning programmereferred to in this paper, my prediction is that significant, measurable results will be fewand random. We shall see. As Peter Scott says “Performance culture may measureeverything except what really matters” (Scott 2003).
Sheila Vaughan, May 2003
Address for correspondence
Sheila VaughanInstitute for Development Policy and ManagementPrecinct CentreOxford RoadManchester M13 9GHE-mail: [email protected]
Acknowledgements
This paper has arisen out of continuing learning conversations with colleagues David Smith, David Mundy and Derek Eldridge. In particular, I should like to thank David Smith for his tireless feedback on the developing concepts this paperembodies.
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