Employee Reviews Revisited

Four years ago, I posted about Employee Reviews.  In the meantime, I've done another 8 reviews, including one that I'm working on as I speak.  I've moved groups, changed bosses, added more employees.  The review model has changed somewhat dramatically in the past few years.  As I look back, some of the advice is the same, but some has changed. 

More to the point, I've changed.  I've been much more involved with our management team, I've often been in frank discussions about employees performance, and I've taken a peek behind the HR curtain and seen things that prompt me to update my tips for completing your own employee review. 

Here are a few more tips that have held true for (at least) the past four years:

Doing your job really well will make you mediocre. A few years ago, Microsoft moved to a model of having all employees create agreed-upon "Commitments," a set of objectives, goals, and accountabilities, prior to the new year.  The review process at the end of the year lists your Commitments, and you and your manager both have a chance to give feedback on how you did over the past year.  For most people, your commitments probably look a lot like your job description.  If they don’t, they probably should. 

Key point: You were hired to do a job.  You’re being paid to deliver results that are worth a lot of money to the company.  Your reward for doing everything you committed is collecting your paycheck.  If you didn’t add value beyond what is expected, you shouldn’t expect exceptional rewards.  Even if you worked 80 hour weeks, sacrificed your personal life, and brought donuts in every morning, doing what’s expected isn’t enough to warrant a raise or a big bonus or a promotion. 

What will get you an exceptional bonus or a promotion?  Exceeding expectations in ways that add value for the company.  A key point in one of my favorite books, The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers, is that you should do your job in 80% of your time at work, and spend 20% of your time doing the job you want next.

Seth said it best: Safe is Risky. 

By the time you write your review, it might be too late to really influence impressions.  This is especially true if you wait until the last minute, like I do…  Not only are opinions formed over the entire year, but there may be cases where promotions/bonuses/rewards are decided before your review is ever read.  It shouldn’t be the case, and Microsoft is trying hard to make sure that things are done far enough in advance to avoid this, but just to be sure, make sure your manager knows about your value to the organization long before your review is due.

Be visible.  This is one of the hardest areas for me, and I’ve learned the hard way how not being visible can stall your progress.  I love my job so much, that I get a lot of satisfaction from seeing things I’m working on come to fruition.  I’d rather work independently to avoid roadblocks or approval processes that slow things down.  I value flexibility over accolades, and sometimes, in the crazy world of Social Media/Community, explaining things takes longer than just doing them.  I have to admit that it’s easier to give a good review to an employee if I know what they do every day.  And as a leader in the org, it’s hard to fight for one employee’s advancement in the organization if I understand their value. 

True confession for me: I’ve been told in the past by co-workers that they don’t understand what I’m working on, and I thought that was okay, because it didn’t involve them.  Fair enough at a co-worker level.  What I didn’t think about is that the leadership team, as a group, was deciding if I should be promoted, or if I should get an exceptional review bonus.  Ooops.  I can only imagine the conversation: “Who is John?  I’m not sure I’ve ever worked with him.  I’m not sure what he does.”  Blank stares around the room.  Not a scenario I ever want to have played out, ever. 

Moments are more important than hard work. Speaking of the leadership team meetings, I’ve been in quite a few of them lately.  I’ve found that all the conversations and the resulting decisions (like promotions or bonuses or awards) come down to memorable moments.

Imagine this scenario: “Who should we pick for employee of the year?”  “I like John.  He’s a hard worker.  I’ve never seen him come in late.  And he only took one week of vacation.”  “Well, I like Alex.  I was in a meeting with him last week, and he took charge of a sticky situation, and explained how important Social Media is in a way I’d never thought of.”  “I agree.  And once, we were under a deadline, and he jumped in at just the right time and offered help that changed our program from a failure to a success.”  “I had one of my employees tell me how much they appreciate Tony’s ability to pull a team together.  I’ve never heard anything but good things about him.”  “I’d like to suggest Alyssa.  A few months ago, I asked him for some feedback on a project my team was working on, and she came back with three solid ideas that we hadn’t considered, and saved us thousands of dollars.  She’s really smart.”  I could go on, but you get the idea.

Make every interaction you have count, especially with senior managers.  If you’re only in a few meetings a year with your VP, you have more to lose by keeping your mouth shut than any risk you might fear of saying something stupid.  Make sure you’re prepared, practice if you need to, but don’t ever go into a meeting where you don’t make a solid, hopefully memorable contribution. 

Whom do you work with, especially at the leadership team level, that wouldn’t be able to come up with their own “moment” where you made a positive impression on them?  You’ll do more for your career by focusing on creating that opportunity than you will doing a great job in isolation. 

Ask for the promotion before your review.  This might be more general advice than review advice, but in my experience as a manager at Microsoft, I have to admit to trying just a little bit harder to get an employee promoted when they’re open about bringing it up throughout the year, during our regular one on ones.  It gives me a chance to give them feedback without the fear of offending them, since they brought it up.  It also puts me in a position where if I gave them advice, and they followed it, I feel compelled to fight to get them promoted.  I can only hope my current team doesn’t read this advice and use it against me…

Don't sweat the small stuff.  There may be things, even in your commitments, that you didn’t do exactly like you thought.  If something didn’t matter to you, and it didn’t matter to the rest of the org, chances are that it won’t matter to your manager.  And if you overdo the documentation, adding pages of metrics/status updates/feedback, your manager might only skim through your review, and miss the good stuff you really want him/her to read.  My MO (YMMV) is to skip the details, and only type out details that strengthen the overall message you’re presenting to your manager.  At the same time, if there was a big commitment you missed, don’t forget to bring it up.  I wrote a bit about that in the previous post four years ago…